Twelve years ago, a health scare prompted Harriet "Chef Bee" Brown to start "waging war with a fork" and launch a healthy catering company. She is just one of the entrepreneurs Detroit's nonprofit groups are working with to generate equitable opportunities through economic and workforce development in the city.
Toni Jones always believed her work was important, but a global pandemic has shown the Detroit entrepreneur just how vital her affirmation brand is to her clients. “Last year women were wearing it as another self-care accessory, but now it’s how women are surviving.”
TechTown Detroit’s Toast of the Town, an annual benefit and award ceremony from the small business incubator and accelerator located in New Center, will be accessible online and free to attend – although donations are encouraged.
With a focus on the city’s often-overlooked neighborhoods, a nonprofit collaboration is taking a personal approach to providing training, resources, and support for Detroit’s entrepreneurs, witnessing the ripple effect that investment creates.
In the past five years, Detroit has seen an 88% increase in women-owned businesses — the largest growth rate of metropolitan areas across the U.S. LaShonda Sims is part of that cohort, striking out with her daughter and cousins to launch a beauty company in 2017, and now, it's that family support that's helping them face down COVID setbacks.
An innovative industrial engineer from Ghana is bringing West African-inspired prints to Detroit's fashion scene, despite COVID-19 creating roadblocks for her budding business.
The 2020 Hatch Detroit Contest has been scrapped. Instead, the contest partners have shifted their attention to Hatch alumni, creating the $100,000 Hatch Detroit Small Business Alumni Relief Fund. Comerica has also granted Hatch Detroit itself an additional $50,000 to provide organizational support.
Detroit entrepreneur Deirdre Roberson doesn't fit a mold. And the scientist-turned-fashion-designer doesn't want you to, either. “People will say to me ‘you look like a model,’ but why did nobody ever tell me ‘you look like a scientist’? We are complex. We are multidimensional people.”
Education. Inclusivity. Hair care. Two entrepreneurs in Detroit want to change the way you think about your locks.
More than 40 small business owners gathered online last week for the first of what promises to be numerous panel discussions hosted by SCORE Detroit, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the establishment and growth of small businesses throughout the region.
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