August Is Black Business Month: Our CEO Reflects on What It Means to Be a Black Woman CEO and Founder

I saw this picture in my iPhone photo library and got a little choked up.

Pictured, Not Pictured

Pictured: my little company, its name and logo, gone public (in person) for the first time. Bill had a vision for Embolden Media Group’s first look out the gate. I didn’t even have the brain space to have thought about a logo for EMG at the time. I was too green, too overwhelmed, too everything a new entrepreneur who never imagined being an entrepreneur is. But Bill saw. He knew. An award-winning designer turned corporate branding and marketing consultant, he had just designed the cover of Pray Hear Write. He then took it upon himself (people may have no idea how much new business owners need some folk to take it upon themselves) and designed EMG’s logo without my asking. Actually, I didn’t know to ask. I didn’t realize it was missing. I was overcome with gratitude when he humbly submitted the completed cover to me via email with the EMG logo all packaged—native files and all—and ready to go. “I figured you needed something on your book…. You have this conference coming up…” He understood the assignment. We needed to look good.

Pictured: me, standing at my first little booth. It was March 8 or 9, 2019, and I was standing here at this conference cloaked in grief and gratitude. My grandmother (my third parent) had just passed a few days before this on March 4. A day after she passed, March 5, I had just released my first book Pray Hear Write. Then I was booked to lead a session at this women’s conference—called Becoming—three days after that. I was doing all I could to just be there in the moment. Hopeless and hopeful at the same time, what else could I do? I didn’t know. I thought of canceling everything. Instead, I went. I spoke. I signed books. I stood and smiled.

Embolden Media Group, the session I taught on how to become a voice through your writing, and my book were all received well. The support from precious people like Michelle McClain-Walters, a Black woman author who also leads a global ministry, who shared her platform with me for this event is unforgettable. My friends Adrienne and Sheila, Black women, came in and helped out at the booth and didn’t ask for one thing. I’m getting emotional writing this.

Now, a couple years later, there’s Elodie, Luverta, Quanny, Cynthia, Sheila, and Autumn—Black women who came to stand with this dreamer. Seven Black women. I’m so grateful for these sisters. We are going to change the world.

Not I But We

Why all Black and all women? Aren’t I a proponent of diversity? Yes, I am. But, honestly, this is who said yes. Who else shows up like Black women for Black women? I’m building this thing from scratch, from below the ground up—no investors, no backing, no outside funding, no capital, no rich parents, no wealthy spouse. Who comes to help a Black woman push her business baby into the next phase of growth but other Black women? We intuitively know the obstacles. We don’t need to hear or see the breakdown. It’s just, “Yes, sis, I’m here. What do you need?”

Also, that we are all Black women working in one company together in an industry that, at large, is so white makes a statement about diversity that I won’t unpack here. Like Edna from The Incredibles said, “It’s too much, darling.” (I wrote an op-ed about the whole thing here, if you’d like to know my thoughts.)

But there are others who have come alongside me in different ways throughout these four years. Some with encouragement. I have always been encouraged by so many—and thank God for that, ‘cause I would have been lost or given up a long time ago without it. Others have come as confidantes and advisors. They let me ask them questions or talk with them about various concerns. They come as clients and patrons, freelancers and contractors. They come as connectors, introducing me to people I need to know, inviting me onto platforms that bolster our mission, and presenting opportunities for visibility.

Still others will come in even more tangible ways. We’re building it; they are coming.

This photo…

Not pictured: The many readers that day who bought the book till it sold out; the aspiring writers who booked services, asked questions, and subscribed to the newsletter and are still rocking with me to this day—thank you!

Not pictured: The many writers, authors, editors, publishers, publishing friends, and supporters over the last four years I’ve led Embolden Media Group (and throughout the fourteen years in publishing prior to this photo) who’ve let me share ideas and hopes and books and advice and expertise and frustrations and failures and success… Thank you!

DuBois’s “Two-ness” and Me

Being a Black woman founder and owner of a publishing consulting firm and literary agency is incredibly tough. I don’t just get to make books. Ava DuVernay said this in an episode of NPR’s How I Built This with Guy Raz podcast about her experience being a Black woman filmmaker—and in the book business so much of this is true for me too:

“…sometimes wishing that I was one of my white male counterparts, who does not have to labor on top of the film; like, who can just make his film, who doesn't also have to go make the speech to the independent film, right—cinema houses—who doesn't have to, like, try to create film literacy in our community and build a screening room that's free for the community to learn about films from around the world, ‘cause there's no movie theaters in our neighborhoods; like, who doesn't have to create initiatives on my sets where, you know, I have to focus on, you know, equalizing opportunities for women directors; who just doesn't have to do that. Like, my white guy friends don't sit on panels about this stuff. Like, they don't get called for articles about this stuff. They don't have to do it. They just can make their stuff. Yeah.”

Me too, Ava. Me too.

Not only do I pitch books and write and edit books (my kids and I, we gotta eat), but I also advocate for a place in publishing where professionals who look like me can thrive so authors who look like me can publish successfully, and so together we can overcome the broken thinking in the industry that undergirds publishing decisions that says books by people of color don’t sell, that people of color don’t read…

This grind from way behind yet still not quite catching up is maddening.

The Spirit Gives Strength

There’s a joy set before me: the rich stories and colorful experiences I get to be part of and see come to life. Then there’s the glint of hope in an author’s eye or quiver in their voice when they feel seen and heard for the first time ever, when they get the deal they never thought they’d get, when they finish the manuscript they thought they’d never be able to write, when they hold the advance copy of a book they thought they’d never see published…

And then there’s me, a Black woman, unique and rare in this industry so white, who gets to stand out though sometimes she’d rather not—this Black woman who owns an agency that works with God to make the impossible possible, who gets to live something of a life that is a beautiful dream—something beyond anything she could ask or imagine, giving her just enough strength to keep grinding and building.