Kansas City is becoming more welcoming for black women who want to start their own businesses.
Adrienne Haynes, the managing partner at the business law firm SEED Law, says there’s more diversity in the entrepreneurial community today than in 2015, when she created the Multicultural Business Coalition with a few other organizations. Half of her clients are black women.
“It requires a tremendous amount of energy … to develop your own social capital,” she says. “It underscores the amount of grit and determination that black women have had in growing their businesses.”
Haynes’ first experience with business was when she was in 8th grade, watching her mom sell Mary Kay cosmetics. Years later, she worked at a health food store that also had an ice cream shop. She was impressed by the owner’s strategy in pairing the two businesses together.
That’s when she started noticing the differences between entrepreneurs who were able to grow their businesses, and those who just had a side hustle.
“I was very intrigued,” says Haynes. “It was really then that I said, ‘Oh, entrepreneurship is a thing.’”
At the time, though, she didn’t see many people who looked like her in the entrepreneurial community. By the time she was ready to graduate from law school, she forced herself to meet with a different attorney every week just to build her own network.
Haynes’ struggles got national attention in 2018 when Dell Gines, senior community development advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, published a report analyzing an unprecedented surge of black women owned businesses in spite of the challenges they face.
In the decade between 2002 and 2012, Gines had learned, the number of businesses owned by black women in America increased by 179%. That was an enormous increase, especially compared with the 52% growth for all women-owned businesses and a 20% increase for all businesses.
Black women were the only group of women in America with a higher share of business ownership than their male counterparts.
Source: KCUR
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