Malcolm Jenkins is not slowing down in the fast-casual food space. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, the former NFL player leads Disrupt Foods, a multi-unit franchise developer and operator of quick-service restaurants. According to his LinkedIn, the goal is to create franchising opportunities for Black and brown communities. “If there’s a mission for me and how I’m moving now, what I want to have an impact on is really educating people on the power of group economics. People when they have success, most of the time they do it as a collective family, as a community. Owning businesses in their own communities,” he said. “When you look at [Black communities] we don’t own the majority of the businesses in it. We don’t own homes most of the time. It just continues to push us into pockets of poverty that are harder and harder to climb out of as an individual,” he told WHYY News. Leading by example, he established Disrupt Foods in 2016 alongside his business partner, Joe Johnson. “In 2016...

A new venture undertaken by Wu-Tang’s Raekwon and “Breakfast Club” host Charlamagne Tha God has officially broken ground. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, Hashstoria, a cannabis lounge, was slated to open in Newark, NJ, and would fulfill a long-held dream of Raekwon’s. “My own life compass has been great to me and can only become greater…these are goals and admirations on my vision board. I’m just marking them off,” the rapper said in a previous Instagram post. In 2023, there were initial roadblocks to overcome when getting the business up and running, as they were first rejected by the Newark Central Planning Board to operate as a Class 5 cannabis retail facility. However, their application was later greenlit by the same board, per NJBIZ. Fast forward to November 2024, and Raekwon and Charlamagne Tha God have officially opened Hashstoria’s doors to the public in partnership with civil rights attorney Bakari Sellers and entrepreneur Jedd Canty, a news release shared with AFROTECH™...

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne is gaining traction in the investment world for her medical device known as the “Band-Aid for nosebleeds.” As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Dr. Clayborne is the founder of NasaClip, which was inspired by her time in residency in Washington, DC. Various patients were coming into the emergency room for an issue professionals in the medical field described as a “lower acuity issue.” “Nosebleeds are most common in kids age 2 to 10, older adults 55 to 80, who might be on blood thinners, it’s really the least likely population to manage it well. So when they can’t get that bleeding to stop, they show up to me in the ER, and they want me to treat them right away. They’re bleeding all over the waiting room demanding to be seen. But for us as ER docs, this is a lower acuity issue, but it happens to be really kind of time-consuming and cumbersome to deal with,” she said over a Zoom webinar held on Oct. 31, 2024. She continued, “I was frustrated as a resident. Often...

Tori Bell is helping companies ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is not an afterthought. Interest In DEI Work The Agnes Scott College graduate’s interest in DEI work was sparked during her early career stages in investment banking in Atlanta, GA, at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. She served as an analyst and associate program manager between 2012 and 2015, managing the summer analyst program, her LinkedIn mentions. She later joined Jopwell, a career platform for minority students and professionals. The platform had received backing from a number of investors, including Magic Johnson, who had participated in a $3.25 million seed round in 2016, according to Inc. magazine. “What I saw during my time there was that you can hire diverse individuals into these major companies, but if they’re not prepared to support them i t’s kind of like you’re yelling into a void, ” Bell told AFROTECH™. “You’re not really doing much to move the needle, because you’re going to see turnover...

Shontay Lundy has revealed she has only one regret in her journey as a founder. Lundy’s brainchild,  Black Girl Sunscreen, launched with a personal investment of $33,000, as AFROTECH™ previously reported. The company offers products designed to provide hydration without leaving a white residue—a common issue encountered by many in the Black community when applying sunscreen. It was this gap in the market that incentivized Lundy. “I’m a woman of the sun, the time I was living in Miami, I currently live in Los Angeles. I love being on the beach. It was ‘Okay, what do you think about sunscreen?’ My friends would offer me sunscreen and I would tell them, ‘Do you see my complexion? That sh-t don’t work on this complexion,'” she explained during a conversation on with AFROTECH™ Brand Manager Will Lucas on the Black Tech Green Money podcast. “So I jumped on the computer and just started to type in keywords, sunscreen for ethnic skin. Sunscreen for Black girls. Sunscreen for brown girls....

Ehime Eigbe has successfully landed her sweet treats in a major retailer. As previously reported by AFROTECH™ , the Nigerian-American entrepreneur is the founder of Sweetkiwi, a yogurt brand launched in 2020. Inspired by her battle with uterine fibroids, which, at 22, she was advised might require surgery, Eigbe sought holistic alternatives. This journey led her to adopt a stricter diet and ultimately to create Sweetkiwi, a brand offering flavors such as vanilla bean, cookies & cream, mango passion fruit, hibiscus & ginger, chocolate hazelnut, and lemon blueberry parfait. “All disease starts in the gut so at Sweetkiwi we continue to work purposefully in our mission to utilize the nutritional power of food to create healthier guts, good health, and wellness,” said Eigbe in a news release shared with AFROTECH™ . View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sweetkiwi (@sweetkiwiusa) Sweetkiwi has been supported through a $250,000 deal from Shark Tank investor,  Robert Herjavec, which...

C. David Moody Jr. once turned down an investment from Michael Jordan for his construction business. Since 1987, Moody, a Howard University alum with a Bachelor of Architecture degree, has been leading C.D. Moody Construction. He launched the Atlanta, GA-based venture seven years after serving as a staff architect and field engineer at Bechtel Power Corp. Moody was in his early 30s at the time of the company’s launch. While speaking with AFROTECH Brand Manager Will Lucas on the “Black Tech Green Money” podcast, he admitted he had a team of three — which later scaled to more than 60 individuals — and launched with low capital. In fact, he and his wife had to borrow a couple thousand dollars to get C.D. Moody Construction off the ground. Moody said his saving grace was financial advice from his father, who served as a professor and later vice provost of the University of Michigan. “My dad grew up in the depression, and things were tight and he grew up very poor in Louisiana,” Moody...

Booker Washington is making homeownership more accessible for urban communities. He is the founder of Techie Homes, a real estate company that designs “smart micro-communities” in Atlanta, GA, priced below current market rates, according to its company website. “Accessible homeownership is an issue in Atlanta,” he told Business Insider. “Our goal is to provide homes at a price point where mortgages are equal to or less than the cost of renting a one-bedroom apartment.” While Washington subscribes to accessible homeownership, he makes it clear he does not want to label Techie Homes’ efforts as an affordable housing project. “We change the way we view environments, and if we change the way we view environments, we’ll change the actual person and how they grow,” Washington explained in a video clip . “That’s the reason why I don’t adopt to affordable housing projects, because if you put people of all the same incomes in the same place, they will only see what that other person’s low...