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A new hub for Black-owned businesses is opening in Evanston, IL. Led and owned by a team of predominantly Black community leaders, The Aux is a 16,000-square-foot commercial space that will feature a wellness studio with services provided by practitioners of color, pop-up marketplaces for healthy food entrepreneurs, flexible space for small business owners, and office and co-working areas, according to information on its website. “We are transforming a vacant property into a beautiful, environmentally sustainable building that emphasizes a quadruple bottom line for cultural, social, economic, and environmental impact,” The Aux website reads. The Aux acquired the property in 2021 and in that same year announced it was seeking a $6 million raise to renovate the space — a project managed by Black-owned, Chicago, IL-based firm Ujamaa Construction. The project’s final cost increased to $10 million with support from public and private donors, per the Evanston Roundtable. In 2022, the City...
After dedicating years to researching Black women’s health, Dr. Leeja Carter has developed a device to assist them. As a professor and a scholar, C arter had a desire to do more work within the community beyond the standard work on publications and presentations. Even in her academic role at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY, she said she felt like a spectator to the issues that were important to her. That all changed in 2020. “My research and work were really social determinants of physical activity and its impact on Black women’s health,” Carter told AFROTECH™. “And being in academia for 15 years as a Black woman researching Black women’s health, while I definitely had spaces of comfort, care, and support, I would say there were greater experiences where I still definitely felt like an outsider and felt that it was still an uphill battle to gain support to do the work that was so close to my heart.” She added, “When you’re in an academic space, what is currency is...
Know any Swahili? Then you’ve probably already noticed that “ujama” looks a lot like the Swahili word for “extended family.” That’s what Hugh Molotsi and the Ujama team are trying to create for America’s busy parents. Childhood Molotsi was born and raised in Zambia to South African parents, who were Apartheid-era exiles. His father wanted him to become a dentist but, after high school, he attended the University of Southern Mississippi to study computer engineering. Before university, Molotsi had never written a single line of code, but he quickly realized that he enjoyed programming. He would later attend Santa Clara University for graduate studies and intern at tech giant Hewlett Packard (HP). Career After graduate school, Molotsi joined HP as a full-time employee. “Working at HP, I discovered that I really enjoyed software and applications much more than being deep in the guts of the inner workings of a computer. So, I started to gravitate towards building front-end...
In a society that demands we fight for diversity and inclusion; many Black business owners are not only asking for a seat at the table but are creating their own. The following Black-owned businesses saw a need in our community and designed a product and business model, that solved a problem with us specifically in mind. 1. Airfordable Airfordable is transforming the way we travel. The site allows customers to make installment payments on flight tickets. Founder, Ama Marfo, created Airfordable in college when she had difficulties affording the $2,000+ plane ticket home to Ghana. So, here’s how it works — find and submit your ticket to the Airfordable site , lock in your ticket by paying a fraction of the total cost, then pick a payment plan. 2. Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books Uncle Bobbie’s is located in Philadelphia, PA under the ownership of Marc Lamont Hill with a motto of “Cool people. Dope books. Great coffee.” It is modeled after Hill’s childhood experiences during his time at...