The Brookings Institution reports that from 2017 to 2020, the number of businesses run by Black women increased by nearly 20%, far outpacing the growth in women-owned businesses and Black-owned businesses overall.
“For me, the rise of Black women entrepreneurs means we're finally starting to believe in ourselves more and realize how limitless we are,” she said after quitting her job at Instagram. says Joy Ofodu, who turned to the content industry full-time. Creator and voice actor in 2022.
Ofodu's decision to leave Instagram reflects a larger trend of Black women abandoning corporate jobs and flocking to entrepreneurship for career freedom, fulfillment and flexibility.
Brianna Du said she decided to start her own business last summer after months of feeling “deeply dissatisfied” with her role as marketing director for a fintech startup.
“I was stuck in a cycle of burnout, where I would start a new job and things would start to go downhill after just a few months, and I had no idea why,” Dou, 30, recalls. .
It wasn't until Doe started working with a career coach in July 2023 that she realized her job wasn't the problem, she was working for a company.
Briana Do
Photo: Jessica Juniper
“I was really scared of failing, Not only did I lose the stability of my monthly paycheck, but it was also tough adapting to a system that wasn't built for me,” Doe says.
Doe has worked on various side projects as a marketing consultant throughout her career since 2011, but never considered turning it into a full-time business until a career coach encouraged her to take the leap into entrepreneurship. did not.
She was fired from the startup in September, just days before she was scheduled to give her two weeks' notice. Just a few weeks later, in October 2023, Doe launched a marketing company, Verbatim, with her co-founder Alexis Rivera Scott. agency. Doe works remotely from her home in Phoenix, and Rivera Scott works remotely from Boise.
“Working for myself was therapeutic and allowed me to create a more fulfilling and collaborative space,” Dou says. “I didn't realize how much trauma I had accumulated at work and wasn't dealing with it until I was completely out of the system.”
Three years ago, Leslie Frerow decided to turn one of her favorite hobbies, drinking wine, into a full-time business.
At the time, Mr. Frerow was working as a senior director at Universal Service Management Company, a nonprofit organization within the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, DC.
She loved her job, but even more she loved her side hustle: leading virtual wine tastings and tours to Maryland wineries.
Frelault also recognized an unmet need that could be met in the wine industry: supporting sommeliers, farmers, and winemakers of color. According to the African American Vintners Association, less than 1% of wineries in the United States are black-owned.
leslie frelow
Photo: K Price Photography
She launched Wine Concierge, an online wine store and subscription-based wine club, in December 2020 and quit her job to run the business full-time in October 2021.
Starting a business in a mostly white, male-dominated industry is not without its challenges.
“When I go to industry events, I'm still one of the few black people or women there,” says Frerow, 53. I would follow them as if they were the owners of the company, not me. ”
Still, Frerow says she wouldn't trade being an entrepreneur for anything.
“It's given me the ultimate flexibility to be there for my elderly parents and pursue what I truly love, which is seeing people get excited about trying wines they didn't know existed.” she says.
Ofodu, a content creator and voice actor, always had a desire to become a performer in the back of his mind, but that dream didn't materialize until the 2020 pandemic lockdown.
“I was truly living the best of both worlds. I landed my dream corporate job, started my own business as an entrepreneur, and got paid for the content I posted on Instagram and TikTok. We have started receiving them,” Ofodu said. She is the same age as her.
Drawing on his childhood love of animated movies and manga, Ofodu decided to use his newfound free time to practice voice acting. She posted her first voice acting demo reel on her Instagram in June 2021, and within hours an offer to narrate a podcast arrived in her inbox.
She left her job as Instagram's integrated marketing manager in October 2022 to pursue voice acting and content creation full-time.
“I was able to gauge the opportunity cost of staying put as a tech employee and only doing content creation and voice acting part-time versus working for myself. Doing both could cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. and job opportunities on the table, simply because I didn't have the time or ability to do it all,” she recalls.
But as soon as Ofodu started voice acting, she added, “It felt like my childhood dreams were coming back to life.” She “knew she had to quit her job and walk by faith and not by sight.”
By all accounts, Ofodu quickly achieved success in his career, lending his voice to video games, podcasts, television series, and even an unreleased animated short with Whoopi Goldberg.
Ofodu says one of her goals as an entrepreneur is to make the voice acting industry more open and inclusive.
“Voice acting and film are still very male-dominated industries, and in some ways it can feel like a bit of a boys' club,” Ofodu says.
According to a 2021 report from the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering and the Geena Davis Gender Institute, Black women and girls played leading or co-lead roles in 4% of the top 100 box-office films in the past 10 years. It is said that it was less than media.
“At the end of the day, when it comes to being a Black woman entrepreneur, I don't want what I'm doing to be so unusual. Being the first or only Black woman to do something. It doesn’t give me any energy,” Ofodu says. “I want to swing the door open for more people to join me.”
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