Maria Menounos says real leaders must be CEOs of their own health — and that means making health care one of your best skill sets.
By Carla Kalogeridis
After having an intracranial tumor removed in 2017 and successfully battling stage 2 pancreatic cancer in 2023 — both of which she attributes in part to an accumulation of poor health choices including not prioritizing her health — Maria Menounos is on a mission. Her message: Leaders must be CEOs of their own health.
Menounos is best known for her work in the entertainment world. She was a TV correspondent and host (Entertainment Tonight, Extra, E!News, Today, Access Hollywood), presenter (Miss Universe pageant, Eurovision Song Contest), actress, bestselling author, entrepreneur, award-winning journalist, and host of the daily podcast Heal Squad.
She describes her earlier life as a whirlwind of 18-hour days, driven determination, high stress, and poor eating. Taking care of herself was not on the priority list — until her body just couldn’t keep pace any longer. Her health traumas led her to what she considers her higher purpose.
For Menounos, it took a brain tumor to open her eyes.
“I knew I had to make changes; I just didn’t know how,” she tells Real Leaders. “I was trapped in an old dream. I wasn’t really happy anymore. I wasn’t fulfilled. But I was doing great.”
At the time, she was hosting E!News. “I was doing like 50 jobs at once,” she recalls. “The first thing I remember waking up from surgery was thinking, ‘What the f— was I doing? I was trying to keep up with people. I don’t need this. This doesn’t define me at all.’”
Menounos describes it as “a rebirth moment.”
“I knew it was my chance to make changes in my life. My body was screaming for help for so long, and I would just shush it, like, ‘Body, be quiet. I’ve got to go back to work.’ My priorities were not in place.”
Menounos knows her story is not unique. “It’s a general issue with high performers. We must go from illiterate health kindergarteners to being CEOs of our health. Kindergarteners don’t know anything. They just do what their friends are doing. Likewise, we tend to follow what we hear about health without any research, and that’s just not serving us. With all the things happening to our air, our water, our food supply, that’s just not good enough anymore. Unfortunately, there is no health literacy, and we are farming out our health decisions to doctors without really understanding what they’re fully capable of and what their expertise is.”
Growing up, Menounos says she loved being with older people because she wanted to learn from their mistakes and avoid making the same ones. “Similarly, my goal is to affect people with what I’ve learned so they can start implementing little things in their life that will make a big difference down the road. Health trauma is so often an accumulation of poor choices. It’s trauma that takes us to the places where we are forced to learn, but I really want to help people find this message without the trauma.”
She points out that leaders hear all the time about work-life balance, but they don’t realize that the balance comes from taking care of themselves. “All we know how to do is win and succeed,” she says. “From the time we are little kids, we are taught to get good grades so that we can go to a great college, get a huge job, make a lot of money. But nowhere in that equation is anyone talking about your health and getting enough sleep, making sure your circadian rhythm is balanced, your hormones are balanced.”
Health Literacy as a Business Skill
Menounos says that to be a real leader and take the best care of your people, you need to develop health literacy as one of your business skills.
“Health literacy is so important because your people need to know that you care about them,” she says. “It’s not normal to do the job of 10 people just because computers have made it possible. We’re taking in so much, and our brains are exhausted and fried. You’re not going to get the best work out of people. Health is just one of those things that you can’t delegate — not anymore.”
Menounos says real leaders show people that succeeding isn’t the only thing. “What you need is 360-degree succeeding,” she says. “It’s really feeling fulfilled — achieving, of course, and doing something meaningful — but also taking care of yourself. If leaders show their people that it is OK to prioritize their health, and other people do the same, then we have a whole new health care system.”
Menounos recalls being terrified to take a day off from work, terrified to not be at the morning meeting. “Living like this, how are you supposed to fit health care into your life? Your employees will work so much harder for you if you give them the freedom and flexibility to take care of themselves,” she says. “Real leaders don’t say that productivity is the most important thing. This is a new area that leaders need to tackle, and they’re going to benefit from it too.”
Your Thoughts Are Your Body
One important step to being CEO of your health, she says, is to learn to manage your thoughts. “It’s a hard pill to swallow, but our thoughts become things,” she says. “As much as we want to avoid the idea that we are contributing to our health, from everything I’ve studied and everyone I’ve learned from, your brain doesn’t know the difference between perception and reality. So, you can tell the brain anything you want — good or bad — and that has a huge impact on what you’re going to experience. The relationship between mental and physical is one thousand percent real. Changing your thinking can change your reality.”
Menounos does a great deal of work on meditation and the mind-body connection, studying people like Dr. Joe Dispenza and Gabby Bernstein. “I want full mind-body-soul healing. I realize what a massive task and undertaking I’m asking of Dream Big Maria. But I’m learning that things bubble up to the surface to be healed. Sometimes you’re trapped in an old dream, and you don’t even realize it. You’ve got to listen and follow the breadcrumbs.”
The Servant Leader Mistake
Menounos says high achievers often think of themselves as servant leaders, and to them, that means putting themselves at the bottom of the list. “But are you going to be valuable to those people you serve when you go down?” she points out. “What are your employees supposed to do — keep pumping you for information while you’re in your hospital bed?”
She recognizes that coaching your people to take care of themselves can be a delicate conversation. “The message about how to take care of yourself must be applied to the right person at the right time. If you’re young and you want to succeed, you’re going to have to work hard. I’m a believer in working hard. But get your sleep, eat right, wear blue light glasses. Good health is an accumulation of choices.”
Menounos believes her health issues were the result of an accumulation of bad choices, extreme stress, and working in a toxic environment. “Now I’m accumulating so many more good choices, and I’m trying to turn that train back,” she says. “Young leaders today can start out making good choices. I thought it was cool to be a workaholic. What an idiot I was. Now, I prioritize my well-being at all costs. I don’t want another brain tumor to learn this lesson all over again.”
Where to Start
Maria Menounos’ message for real leaders:
“You cannot lay your care at anyone’s doorstep but your own. You must become an expert who knows what each doctor you deal with is good at and what they’re not good at. It’s hard work to be healthy these days. But you must do this in a way that sets an example for your employees, and then allow them to follow your example.”
Menounos clarifies that she is more critical of the medical system than of doctors themselves. “Doctors are amazing, but most of them are amazing at a few things,” she says. “As Tony Robbins puts it, ‘Doctors can be sincere, but they can be sincerely wrong.’”
She underscores that the smart play is to take charge of your own health plan. “When you get an opinion, you’ve got to get another opinion. Get multiple opinions until you feel good. You need to know your surgeon has done this thousands of times — not one time, not 10 times.”
Menounos admits that asking questions is hard. “People come into doctors’ offices with their Google stuff, and doctors get really abrasive,” she says. “So now you’re fighting egos when all you’re wanting to do is to be an advocate for yourself. You have to ask the right questions: How many of these surgeries have you performed? How long have you been doing this? What possible things could go wrong? Their experience is the No. 1 thing, but you must ask about it in a nice way.
“Nurses and doctors are overstretched,” she continues. “They’re exhausted. By the time they see you, they’ve already dealt with a lot of cranky people who have been mean to them. So, you must find a way to massage egos and communicate and get what you want, which is a good outcome.”
Maria Menounos says real leaders must be CEOs of their own health — and that means making health care one of your best skill sets.
By Carla Kalogeridis
After having an intracranial tumor removed in 2017 and successfully battling stage 2 pancreatic cancer in 2023 — both of which she attributes in part to an accumulation of poor health choices including not prioritizing her health — Maria Menounos is on a mission. Her message: Leaders must be CEOs of their own health.
Menounos is best known for her work in the entertainment world. She was a TV correspondent and host (Entertainment Tonight, Extra, E!News, Today, Access Hollywood), presenter (Miss Universe pageant, Eurovision Song Contest), actress, bestselling author, entrepreneur, award-winning journalist, and host of the daily podcast Heal Squad.
She describes her earlier life as a whirlwind of 18-hour days, driven determination, high stress, and poor eating. Taking care of herself was not on the priority list — until her body just couldn’t keep pace any longer. Her health traumas led her to what she considers her higher purpose.
For Menounos, it took a brain tumor to open her eyes.
“I knew I had to make changes; I just didn’t know how,” she tells Real Leaders. “I was trapped in an old dream. I wasn’t really happy anymore. I wasn’t fulfilled. But I was doing great.”
At the time, she was hosting E!News. “I was doing like 50 jobs at once,” she recalls. “The first thing I remember waking up from surgery was thinking, ‘What the f— was I doing? I was trying to keep up with people. I don’t need this. This doesn’t define me at all.’”
Menounos describes it as “a rebirth moment.”
“I knew it was my chance to make changes in my life. My body was screaming for help for so long, and I would just shush it, like, ‘Body, be quiet. I’ve got to go back to work.’ My priorities were not in place.”
Menounos knows her story is not unique. “It’s a general issue with high performers. We must go from illiterate health kindergarteners to being CEOs of our health. Kindergarteners don’t know anything. They just do what their friends are doing. Likewise, we tend to follow what we hear about health without any research, and that’s just not serving us. With all the things happening to our air, our water, our food supply, that’s just not good enough anymore. Unfortunately, there is no health literacy, and we are farming out our health decisions to doctors without really understanding what they’re fully capable of and what their expertise is.”
Growing up, Menounos says she loved being with older people because she wanted to learn from their mistakes and avoid making the same ones. “Similarly, my goal is to affect people with what I’ve learned so they can start implementing little things in their life that will make a big difference down the road. Health trauma is so often an accumulation of poor choices. It’s trauma that takes us to the places where we are forced to learn, but I really want to help people find this message without the trauma.”
She points out that leaders hear all the time about work-life balance, but they don’t realize that the balance comes from taking care of themselves. “All we know how to do is win and succeed,” she says. “From the time we are little kids, we are taught to get good grades so that we can go to a great college, get a huge job, make a lot of money. But nowhere in that equation is anyone talking about your health and getting enough sleep, making sure your circadian rhythm is balanced, your hormones are balanced.”
Health Literacy as a Business Skill
Menounos says that to be a real leader and take the best care of your people, you need to develop health literacy as one of your business skills.
“Health literacy is so important because your people need to know that you care about them,” she says. “It’s not normal to do the job of 10 people just because computers have made it possible. We’re taking in so much, and our brains are exhausted and fried. You’re not going to get the best work out of people. Health is just one of those things that you can’t delegate — not anymore.”
Menounos says real leaders show people that succeeding isn’t the only thing. “What you need is 360-degree succeeding,” she says. “It’s really feeling fulfilled — achieving, of course, and doing something meaningful — but also taking care of yourself. If leaders show their people that it is OK to prioritize their health, and other people do the same, then we have a whole new health care system.”
Menounos recalls being terrified to take a day off from work, terrified to not be at the morning meeting. “Living like this, how are you supposed to fit health care into your life? Your employees will work so much harder for you if you give them the freedom and flexibility to take care of themselves,” she says. “Real leaders don’t say that productivity is the most important thing. This is a new area that leaders need to tackle, and they’re going to benefit from it too.”
Your Thoughts Are Your Body
One important step to being CEO of your health, she says, is to learn to manage your thoughts. “It’s a hard pill to swallow, but our thoughts become things,” she says. “As much as we want to avoid the idea that we are contributing to our health, from everything I’ve studied and everyone I’ve learned from, your brain doesn’t know the difference between perception and reality. So, you can tell the brain anything you want — good or bad — and that has a huge impact on what you’re going to experience. The relationship between mental and physical is one thousand percent real. Changing your thinking can change your reality.”
Menounos does a great deal of work on meditation and the mind-body connection, studying people like Dr. Joe Dispenza and Gabby Bernstein. “I want full mind-body-soul healing. I realize what a massive task and undertaking I’m asking of Dream Big Maria. But I’m learning that things bubble up to the surface to be healed. Sometimes you’re trapped in an old dream, and you don’t even realize it. You’ve got to listen and follow the breadcrumbs.”
The Servant Leader Mistake
Menounos says high achievers often think of themselves as servant leaders, and to them, that means putting themselves at the bottom of the list. “But are you going to be valuable to those people you serve when you go down?” she points out. “What are your employees supposed to do — keep pumping you for information while you’re in your hospital bed?”
She recognizes that coaching your people to take care of themselves can be a delicate conversation. “The message about how to take care of yourself must be applied to the right person at the right time. If you’re young and you want to succeed, you’re going to have to work hard. I’m a believer in working hard. But get your sleep, eat right, wear blue light glasses. Good health is an accumulation of choices.”
Menounos believes her health issues were the result of an accumulation of bad choices, extreme stress, and working in a toxic environment. “Now I’m accumulating so many more good choices, and I’m trying to turn that train back,” she says. “Young leaders today can start out making good choices. I thought it was cool to be a workaholic. What an idiot I was. Now, I prioritize my well-being at all costs. I don’t want another brain tumor to learn this lesson all over again.”
Where to Start
Maria Menounos’ message for real leaders:
“You cannot lay your care at anyone’s doorstep but your own. You must become an expert who knows what each doctor you deal with is good at and what they’re not good at. It’s hard work to be healthy these days. But you must do this in a way that sets an example for your employees, and then allow them to follow your example.”
Menounos clarifies that she is more critical of the medical system than of doctors themselves. “Doctors are amazing, but most of them are amazing at a few things,” she says. “As Tony Robbins puts it, ‘Doctors can be sincere, but they can be sincerely wrong.’”
She underscores that the smart play is to take charge of your own health plan. “When you get an opinion, you’ve got to get another opinion. Get multiple opinions until you feel good. You need to know your surgeon has done this thousands of times — not one time, not 10 times.”
Menounos admits that asking questions is hard. “People come into doctors’ offices with their Google stuff, and doctors get really abrasive,” she says. “So now you’re fighting egos when all you’re wanting to do is to be an advocate for yourself. You have to ask the right questions: How many of these surgeries have you performed? How long have you been doing this? What possible things could go wrong? Their experience is the No. 1 thing, but you must ask about it in a nice way.
“Nurses and doctors are overstretched,” she continues. “They’re exhausted. By the time they see you, they’ve already dealt with a lot of cranky people who have been mean to them. So, you must find a way to massage egos and communicate and get what you want, which is a good outcome.”
Follow these 4 steps to become a future friendly purposeful business that will last.
By Desirée Bombenon
Incorporating purpose and sustainability into a business operation are key components to acquiring and retaining talent as well as securing partnerships. As recently as 10 years ago, we would not have been highlighting this as a major strategic move for a company — but the shift has happened.
We see the world differently, and only organizations that can adapt to the changing conditions and adopt the definition of future-friendly will be relevant, not because of their product or service, but because of how they operate.
Here’s how to start the road to a purposeful and sustainable business.
1 Leadership Acceptance
You cannot have team buy-in without authentic leadership acceptance for the shift in how your business will operate. Commitments of time, energy, and thoughtfulness must go into re-imagining a different business model, and leadership is key to execution.
2 A Guiding Coalition
People will follow other people whom they have a deep respect and trust for. Develop a team of influencers who can carry the message and create excitement in all divisions of the company. When the purpose and mission are articulated by a trusted peer, they are more likely to be accepted and supported by the team.
3 Sustainability as a Strategy
When developing your company strategy, sustainable practices should be part of the blueprint. Companies normally review or revamp their strategy every three years — or fewer if working with sprint strategies. When planning the next few years, build in a budget and program for sustainability. Whether it is digitization or a recycling program, it doesn’t need to have a huge cost. Some companies have implemented roles like chief sustainability officer or sustainability champion.
4 Measurable Impact
There is nothing more powerful than seeing the outcomes of your work. The same goes for sustainable practices. There are many ways to start measuring impact. Once you see the results and difference you are making not only in your company but with the community, share that information with your team and customers. These meaningful practices tie back into your overall corporate social responsibility and the values and beliefs by which your organization operates.
In addition, there are many support systems and models out there. Becoming a Certified B Corporation is one way to start the process. Other steps forward include setting targets for measurable environmental, social, and governance impact and focusing on outcomes, no matter how small.
The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) also has a multitude of resources and supports to help businesses start the process of sustainable practices. The UNGC 10 Principles provide a checklist focused on four pillars: human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption.
Whatever you’re considering doing to become purposeful and sustainable, start now. Your business’s future depends on it.
Desirée Bombenon is CEO and chief disruption officer of SureCall and a diversity board council member for the Women’s Executive Network. She has over 30 years of business operational experience.
Follow these 4 steps to become a future friendly purposeful business that will last.
By Desirée Bombenon
Incorporating purpose and sustainability into a business operation are key components to acquiring and retaining talent as well as securing partnerships. As recently as 10 years ago, we would not have been highlighting this as a major strategic move for a company — but the shift has happened.
We see the world differently, and only organizations that can adapt to the changing conditions and adopt the definition of future-friendly will be relevant, not because of their product or service, but because of how they operate.
Here’s how to start the road to a purposeful and sustainable business.
1 Leadership Acceptance
You cannot have team buy-in without authentic leadership acceptance for the shift in how your business will operate. Commitments of time, energy, and thoughtfulness must go into re-imagining a different business model, and leadership is key to execution.
2 A Guiding Coalition
People will follow other people whom they have a deep respect and trust for. Develop a team of influencers who can carry the message and create excitement in all divisions of the company. When the purpose and mission are articulated by a trusted peer, they are more likely to be accepted and supported by the team.
3 Sustainability as a Strategy
When developing your company strategy, sustainable practices should be part of the blueprint. Companies normally review or revamp their strategy every three years — or fewer if working with sprint strategies. When planning the next few years, build in a budget and program for sustainability. Whether it is digitization or a recycling program, it doesn’t need to have a huge cost. Some companies have implemented roles like chief sustainability officer or sustainability champion.
4 Measurable Impact
There is nothing more powerful than seeing the outcomes of your work. The same goes for sustainable practices. There are many ways to start measuring impact. Once you see the results and difference you are making not only in your company but with the community, share that information with your team and customers. These meaningful practices tie back into your overall corporate social responsibility and the values and beliefs by which your organization operates.
In addition, there are many support systems and models out there. Becoming a Certified B Corporation is one way to start the process. Other steps forward include setting targets for measurable environmental, social, and governance impact and focusing on outcomes, no matter how small.
The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) also has a multitude of resources and supports to help businesses start the process of sustainable practices. The UNGC 10 Principles provide a checklist focused on four pillars: human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption.
Whatever you’re considering doing to become purposeful and sustainable, start now. Your business’s future depends on it.
Desirée Bombenon is CEO and chief disruption officer of SureCall and a diversity board council member for the Women’s Executive Network. She has over 30 years of business operational experience.
Accelerate your impact and your bottom line by attracting and building a people-first culture.
Imagine a world where work is additive to people’s lives. They take home a sense of inspiration and belonging to their families, friends, and communities, setting off a positive ripple effect.
Leaders have the power to perpetuate this cycle of good — and it’s not fluffy stuff. It’s good for business.
Companies that effectively deliver on their employee value proposition can decrease annual employee turnover by nearly 70% and increase new hire commitment by about 30%.
In a recent study, happiness led to a 12% spike in productivity, while unhappy workers proved 10% less productive.
Companies with engaged employees outperform those without them by 202%.
About 75% of Americans would not take a job with a company that has a bad reputation, even if they were unemployed.
Define Your Employee Value Proposition (aka What’s In It For Them?)
The standard hiring process starts with employers vetting candidates. But candidates are also deciding if they want to invest their professional talent and time into a specific employer. As such, the exchange needs to be two-directional. Ask, “Why would a candidate want to work here?”
What can you define and share with candidates to help them understand what their experience will be at your company? This includes tangible things like pay, benefits, and work expectations, as well as intangible things, like the ecosystem of support, recognition, values, culture, purpose, learning opportunities, etc. Collectively, this is your employee value proposition, of which company culture is one component.
10 Ways to Strengthen Company Culture
Build trust. Hire great people, equip them well, then trust them to do their jobs. No need for lots of extra rules when implicit trust (not subservience) is foundational to your culture.
Lead with empathy. Take time to understand where people are coming from.
Vulnerability can be a superpower. Be open and transparent so that your employees know you are human too.
The best leaders don’t have all the answers. Regularly invite in ideas, solutions, and collaboration from your team.
Live your company values. When you show up this way, you attract employees who naturally and authentically live similar values.
People need to feel heard. Create an environment where they feel comfortable sharing what’s working, what’s not, and what they need or can contribute.
Create an environment where mistakes are OK. Build opportunities for learning.
Personalized outreach really matters. Show that you see people as individuals by checking in and voicing your appreciation.
Show up to work as your authentic self. Buck the old way of authoritative leadership in favor of inspiring leadership.
Little things make a big difference. You don’t need to do it perfectly. Everything you choose to do will add up to something much larger.
Peggy Shellis the founder and CEO of Creative Alignments, a Time-Based Recruiting® company that partners with companies creating a great place to work. Creative Alignments is a Real Leaders Top Impact Company Award winner and sponsor of Real Leaders UNITE. Click here to see her post about her experience there.
Accelerate your impact and your bottom line by attracting and building a people-first culture.
Imagine a world where work is additive to people’s lives. They take home a sense of inspiration and belonging to their families, friends, and communities, setting off a positive ripple effect.
Leaders have the power to perpetuate this cycle of good — and it’s not fluffy stuff. It’s good for business.
Companies that effectively deliver on their employee value proposition can decrease annual employee turnover by nearly 70% and increase new hire commitment by about 30%.
In a recent study, happiness led to a 12% spike in productivity, while unhappy workers proved 10% less productive.
Companies with engaged employees outperform those without them by 202%.
About 75% of Americans would not take a job with a company that has a bad reputation, even if they were unemployed.
Define Your Employee Value Proposition (aka What’s In It For Them?)
The standard hiring process starts with employers vetting candidates. But candidates are also deciding if they want to invest their professional talent and time into a specific employer. As such, the exchange needs to be two-directional. Ask, “Why would a candidate want to work here?”
What can you define and share with candidates to help them understand what their experience will be at your company? This includes tangible things like pay, benefits, and work expectations, as well as intangible things, like the ecosystem of support, recognition, values, culture, purpose, learning opportunities, etc. Collectively, this is your employee value proposition, of which company culture is one component.
10 Ways to Strengthen Company Culture
Build trust. Hire great people, equip them well, then trust them to do their jobs. No need for lots of extra rules when implicit trust (not subservience) is foundational to your culture.
Lead with empathy. Take time to understand where people are coming from.
Vulnerability can be a superpower. Be open and transparent so that your employees know you are human too.
The best leaders don’t have all the answers. Regularly invite in ideas, solutions, and collaboration from your team.
Live your company values. When you show up this way, you attract employees who naturally and authentically live similar values.
People need to feel heard. Create an environment where they feel comfortable sharing what’s working, what’s not, and what they need or can contribute.
Create an environment where mistakes are OK. Build opportunities for learning.
Personalized outreach really matters. Show that you see people as individuals by checking in and voicing your appreciation.
Show up to work as your authentic self. Buck the old way of authoritative leadership in favor of inspiring leadership.
Little things make a big difference. You don’t need to do it perfectly. Everything you choose to do will add up to something much larger.
Peggy Shellis the founder and CEO of Creative Alignments, a Time-Based Recruiting® company that partners with companies creating a great place to work. Creative Alignments is a Real Leaders Top Impact Company Award winner and sponsor of Real Leaders UNITE. Click here to see her post about her experience there.
Here’s my best advice from 30 years of C-suite experience.
By Darin Anderson
As impact companies, we see the greater purpose of our work and are dedicated to making decisions with the best interest of team members, customers, investors, partners in mind, knowing financial success will follow. However, it’s not always an easy path. From my three decades of C-suite experience, here is what I have learned are the keys to being a successful impact CEO.
1. Be clear on your purpose and what success looks for you and your organization. Find the best people who can help you achieve that — people who share your values, vision, passion, and determination.
2. Execute your plan. Listen, adapt as necessary, and execute. Work diligently and always do the right thing for your team and clients. Be highly accountable for results and actions, and be transparent in all that you do and your reasons for doing it.
3. Share the rewards equitably. Help people feel like owners in the organization’s success by allowing them to be rewarded like owners. We make it a priority to compensate our team members well and relative to the contributions they make with salary, benefits, bonuses, and company shares. Everyone in our organization can be an employee-owner. We are also transparent about our performance. When people feel truly invested in the long-term success of your organization, they will show up, give the extra effort, and deliver the desired output.
4. Surround yourself with people and peers outside of your organization who will be honest with you in life and take an active interest in your well-being and that of the company. I have many CEO friends whom I meet with regularly or run or ride bikes with to review family, personal, and business progress. I have learned so much from them and their approach and viewpoints. These connections are invaluable and have helped me be a better leader.
5. Find great partners in life. I am blessed to have an amazing spouse whom I have tremendous respect for and who appreciates me. She makes me a better person. We support each other and champion each other in this beautiful life journey. Like my marriage, my leaders are also my partners in life. We are committed to each other’s success, and we all know it.
6. Consider your personal impact and legacy. Look in the mirror and regularly ask yourself: Am I doing all the right things to achieve this? I reflect on my own impact often. Personally, I believe that if you take care of the people around you, create the right environment for individual and team success, and share rewards equitably and thoughtfully, you’re going to leave a great legacy.
Darin Andersonhas served as chairman and CEO of Salas O’Brien since 2006, guiding the company to become one of North America’s leading engineering and technical services firms. He has led large engineering and construction organizations for 30 years as CEO, COO, and CFO.
Here’s my best advice from 30 years of C-suite experience.
By Darin Anderson
As impact companies, we see the greater purpose of our work and are dedicated to making decisions with the best interest of team members, customers, investors, partners in mind, knowing financial success will follow. However, it’s not always an easy path. From my three decades of C-suite experience, here is what I have learned are the keys to being a successful impact CEO.
1. Be clear on your purpose and what success looks for you and your organization. Find the best people who can help you achieve that — people who share your values, vision, passion, and determination.
2. Execute your plan. Listen, adapt as necessary, and execute. Work diligently and always do the right thing for your team and clients. Be highly accountable for results and actions, and be transparent in all that you do and your reasons for doing it.
3. Share the rewards equitably. Help people feel like owners in the organization’s success by allowing them to be rewarded like owners. We make it a priority to compensate our team members well and relative to the contributions they make with salary, benefits, bonuses, and company shares. Everyone in our organization can be an employee-owner. We are also transparent about our performance. When people feel truly invested in the long-term success of your organization, they will show up, give the extra effort, and deliver the desired output.
4. Surround yourself with people and peers outside of your organization who will be honest with you in life and take an active interest in your well-being and that of the company. I have many CEO friends whom I meet with regularly or run or ride bikes with to review family, personal, and business progress. I have learned so much from them and their approach and viewpoints. These connections are invaluable and have helped me be a better leader.
5. Find great partners in life. I am blessed to have an amazing spouse whom I have tremendous respect for and who appreciates me. She makes me a better person. We support each other and champion each other in this beautiful life journey. Like my marriage, my leaders are also my partners in life. We are committed to each other’s success, and we all know it.
6. Consider your personal impact and legacy. Look in the mirror and regularly ask yourself: Am I doing all the right things to achieve this? I reflect on my own impact often. Personally, I believe that if you take care of the people around you, create the right environment for individual and team success, and share rewards equitably and thoughtfully, you’re going to leave a great legacy.
Darin Andersonhas served as chairman and CEO of Salas O’Brien since 2006, guiding the company to become one of North America’s leading engineering and technical services firms. He has led large engineering and construction organizations for 30 years as CEO, COO, and CFO.
Pharrell Williams is closing the opportunity gap for entrepreneurs of color.
By Real Leaders
Pharrell Williams knows music. One of the most influential musical artists and producers in hip-hop, R&B, and pop, Williams has created chart-topping hits for household names, earning 13 Grammy Awards and six Billboard Music Awards. (Cue the mega-hit song Happy.)
Then there are his latest accomplishments in fashion design (Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director), film production (Hidden Figures co-producer), and several other companies the serial entrepreneur helped found or collaborate with. But what’s music to Williams’ ears lately is not his own success as much as helping others succeed. He is determined to help Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs propel their startups through his budding nonprofit, Black Ambition.
Williams emphasizes that ambition is limitless, but access is not. Even today, Black and Hispanic founders in the U.S. receive less than 3% of all venture capital allocated. That’s why he is investing capital and resources into Black and Hispanic high-growth startups, working to close the opportunity and wealth gap for entrepreneurs who have historically been left out of traditional investment funnels.
“We can do and be anything we want to,” Williams tells Real Leaders. “We just need the support, we need the resources, and we need the tutelage and the guidance.”
Founded in 2020, Black Ambition wrapped up its third annual awards program in November. To date, the nonprofit has given out nearly $10 million to over 100 Black and Hispanic founders through a general prize track and a track for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Black Ambition has supported an additional 500-plus entrepreneurs with mentorship to strengthen their ventures. To say that Williams is happy with Black Ambition’s impact would be an understatement.
“You gotta pinch yourself because man, this is really happening,” Williams says. “These people are real. The dream is coming true.”
Black Ambition does not only give prize money. As critical as those funds are, the organization also provides other support to set up entrepreneurs for continued success. Semifinalists participate in several months of programming that includes mentorship, resources, community, and networks. Williams feels that he is answering a calling.
“I’ve learned from the mistakes that I’ve made, and I realized how much I paid dearly for it,” Williams says. “And I realize how many good things I’ve done and how they affect things in a much more exponential way. When you see all the parallels and all the patterns, you start to realize there’s this overarching goal of doing good and doing well. It’s a karma credit score. I’m just paying my tithes to the universe, not only leaving the door open, but doing my absolute best to share the codes in the most universal way possible.”
Anti-Systematic Gravity
At its core, Williams defines Black Ambition as anti-systemic gravity, a push to help Black and Hispanic startups gain momentum despite the challenges. It’s a need he witnessed first-hand growing up in the projects in Virginia Beach.
“As a child, I don’t know that I ever had ambitions to be an entrepreneur,” he says. “I had never heard of the word, and I didn’t grow up in a community that had that kind of mentality. Entrepreneurship was not something that we understood to be within the realm of possibility, and there was a hundred million percent no Black Ambition as a construct.”
He continues, “There were lots of Black-owned companies in Virginia Beach and Norfolk. They just would never celebrate it the way we celebrate it now. You didn’t hear about the person who owns the tire company or the landscaping business and was totally crushing it or the person who owns a swath of gas stations. The way that we herald it now is amazing, but we should have been doing that all along. Gravity pulls our race down, and we don’t even know it. Disproportionate access to health care, education, and representation — that’s a gravitational force that pulls down on marginalized people more so than it does for our White siblings.”
Williams considers himself fortunate to have been able to break through this gravitational pull. Born to a handyman and a teacher, the college dropout turned to music to cope with neighborhood shootings and hardships. “Music was one of the greatest distractions,” he says. “The music got us by.”
His career kicked off when he was discovered at a high school talent show by music industry veteran Teddy Riley. Williams later partnered with a friend to establish the production company The Neptunes, promoting and selling the work of pop, hip-hop, and R&B artists, as well as forming an R&B group with the same name.
“When I got into the music industry, eventually I realized, OK, you’re going to be your own publisher, so that’s a business,” he says. “As a musician, you’re making music, so you are making a product, and that product has to be managed. You are going to be known for the person who is supplying this product. The instruments that you use are what help you create or conjure this music. So, you start thinking entrepreneurially just by being a musician.”
Williams produced explosive hits for Jay-Z, Beyonce, Britney Spears, Nelly, Gwen Stefani, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran, and other household names, and while the music side came naturally to him, some of the business side did not.
“The first 10 years, I made so many terrible investments, but I didn’t have anyone around to vet these opportunities and tell me, ‘OK, this is worth your time, this is worth your space,’ and most importantly, ‘this is also worth your financial investment,’” Williams says. He is ensuring that Black Ambition fills that role for entrepreneurs today.
“This is My Purpose”
Williams and his team are forging a way for Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs to “build uninterrupted.” It’s a phrase he uses often within Black Ambition.
“Building uninterrupted means that there is no historical and-or systemic gravity on your concept, that it is able to free float, and exist, and build on its own,” he says. “You’re uninhibited by any kind of gravitational force.”
To help create those opportunities, Williams put Felecia Hatcher at the helm of Black Ambition. As CEO, Hatcher has helped entrepreneurs connect to over $100 million in funding over the past eight years, earning honors from the Obama White House, Harvard, and Comcast, to name a few. She is an author, speaker, business owner, and co-founder of the Black Tech Week conference and The Center for Black Innovation. “Black Ambition is lucky to have her, but so are all of these entrepreneurial minds,” Williams says. “I always look to her. You listen to her speak, and you feel like you can do anything.” (Read Real Leaders’ Q&A with Hatcher.)
Black Ambition also has formed several strong partnerships with leading brands and organizations including Adidas, the Lennar Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Visa Foundation, Heineken, and Chanel. Plus, the nonprofit offers its awardees bi-weekly office hours with proven leaders in marketing, public relations, and brand building with Heineken, Snapchat, Netflix, and others.
“You need as many incredibly well-educated, well-experienced eyes around you at all times, and they should be better than you because if they aren’t better than you, then you’re never going to be better than what you are,” Williams says. “When you get a handful of them around you, wow, you’re about to be lifted.”
Winning recipients attend town hall meetings with Williams and receive life coaching and therapeutic workshops in groups and one-on-one, setting up a holistic career approach.
“It takes a village,” Williams says. “You just need the right people. You need the right energy — and that energy is curiosity, it is ambition, and it is the desire to see the person next to you do well. It is a devotion and a diligence with respectful reciprocation.”
As for fielding the prize applicants, Black Ambition looks for unique and innovative businesses to propel, primarily in the fields of technology and consumer products and services, but also in health care, media and entertainment, and Web 3.0.
“The purpose of a business should be based on its necessity,” Williams says. “It should exist because we need it and we don’t have it. Or if we already have it, it’s because this is the superior version and this is going to change the game. Other than that, it’s just fodder. We don’t need another edition of the same. We need something that is going to level us up.”
In 2023, Black Ambition introduced the So Ambitious HBCU Tour in partnership with Techstars and Thurgood Marshall College Fund. The tour brings entrepreneurial training to historically Black colleges and universities to create new wealth pathways and opportunities for undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurs. Students create real companies with the help of mentors, investors, and experienced entrepreneurs and the support of incubator and accelerator programs, business pitch competitions, boot camps, and access to capital. The tour is targeting Alabama, Florida, Virginia, Louisiana, Maryland, Texas, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.
“It looks so promising,” Williams says. “You see the support we’re getting, the kinds of partnerships we’re forming, and the people who are getting involved, the really creative Black and Brown ideas that are coming in — it’s really inspiring.”
A man of faith, Williams feels divinely aligned with his work for Black Ambition. “I believe that this is my purpose,” Williams says. “I believe that I’m supposed to share the codes, and I believe that there needs to be this organization that helps to share the codes by doing some funding and also really serious strategic advice and mentorship.”
Williams points out the need for Black Ambition to be amplified. “I see a future with Black Ambition chapters or offices all over the world because the Black and Brown diaspora isn’t just in America,” he says. “No matter what position we play in this world, we need to know that we can be anything, and that is the ultimate Black Ambition.”
Removing Barriers, Accelerating Success
Black Ambition CEO Felecia Hatcher gets real about the challenges of Black and Hispanic startups.
Real Leaders: What is Black Ambition, and what are you as an organization set out to accomplish?
Felicia Hatcher: Pharrell was the ultimate visionary creating Black Ambition, and when you think about vision, you also think about how expansive vision can be when it’s tied to legacy. So, I think of all the amazing things that he has done and has yet to do. The entrepreneurs impacted by his vision will be a part of his greatest legacy because those are the ripple effects.
We have 100 entrepreneurs that we’ve invested in up until this point at the three-year mark. A lot of organizations that do similar work have only dreamed of impacting as many entrepreneurs as fast as we can. We understand the premise that not only are we trying to close the wealth gap, but wealth has a need for speed — and a lot of people have gotten really, really comfortable wasting the time of Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs. We know that time is infinitely more valuable than money. So, once they waste that money, waste that time, they cannot get it back.
So, with Black Ambition, we do a few things. One, we’re getting them the resources faster, we’re getting them the money faster, so that they can go out into the marketplace, make decisions, hire people faster, and have a faster impact upon their communities while building really good companies. I think of all the success that the founders have had. We’ll reach the point where we’ve invested just about $10 million into these companies in 2023. They’ve gone on to raise over $92 million in the past three years with all the entrepreneurs that we interface with, and that’s no small feat when you look at the number of less than 3% of all companies actually receiving venture capital investment are Black and Hispanic.
What keeps me up at night is, if this initiative was never founded, these brilliant companies would not have been able to have the impact that they’ve had as well as the ripple and network effect. There are just so many people who stand in the way of this greatness being able to happen, which is the problem that we’re fighting every single day.
RL: What have been some of Black Ambition’s biggest challenges so far?
Hatcher: There are a lot of challenges when you’re building a program that also spans quite broadly in whom we serve — not just early entrepreneurs who are a little bit more seasoned, but then we also fund and support HBCU students. Pharrell and I feel that HBCUs are some of the most fertile but untapped grounds for talent, but that also comes with a level of additional support that’s needed sometimes because they’re very young entrepreneurs who haven’t done significant time in corporate and then decided to leave corporate America and launch a startup, which is what we see oftentimes with our early-stage startups. We make sure that they have the soft skills, support, and training that they need as well as mentorship and programmatic support so they can be globally competitive with what they’re building. We also teach them to be very good stewards of the relationships that often come from Pharrell.
In the business world, everything is a relationship game, whether you like it or not. Being able to be good stewards of those relationships, especially when you’re building a program at scale, is something that we are very careful with, and then really trying to instill that in the entrepreneurs we’re introducing them to, which he has cultivated over the years and we’ve cultivated as an organization.
The other part is funding for the organization. A lot of organizations that made very big commitments in 2020 have walked them back in a moment when we need additional capital. Funding for Black entrepreneurs and startup founders specifically is down 45% in the last year. In a time where the economic climate is a little shaky, those entrepreneurs need capital even more. Having great, strong institutional partners that have been with Black Ambition from the beginning is critical, but then we also have to navigate that day to day to make sure we’re building a sustainable organization that can continue to fund those entrepreneurs at the level in they need and which we’ve deemed to be catalytic for those entrepreneurs. It’s definitely a challenge we navigate every single day.
RL: What does Black Ambition look for in its applicants?
Hatcher: We look at their risk tolerance, how they’re able to navigate crises and change, and their ability to lead as a whole — so what makes them a great leader that not only will allow them to build teams but also to leverage Black Ambition’s initial investment to bring on additional investors. We also look at a level of resource magnetism: Do they have it? Can they attract the resources, people, and buy-in that they need to continue to build a thriving startup in their communities?
Then, we look at the usual stuff — product market fit, the market potential as a whole, the viability of being able to scale and be very good stewards of the resources.
Ultimately, what we’ve been building with Black Ambition with Pharrell’s vision is like a rocket ship for these entrepreneurs. Not every entrepreneur is ready to move and scale as fast as they think they are, so we’re also looking at some characteristics that represent that they can get on the rocket ship that all entrepreneurs hope for and then be able to take it, do something with it, and then ultimately be massive contributors back into the Black Ambition community.
RL: Is impact a common thread among Black Ambition’s winning companies?
Hatcher: When you look across our portfolio of entrepreneurs that we’ve invested in, they’re all for-profit companies, but they have the heart and soul of social impact entrepreneurs. They’re all building something much bigger than themselves with some sort of direct impact back to their communities. It’s an unstated thing that we look for in our selection process.
Community X is one of the companies that immediately comes top of mind because they built a platform that allows people to quickly sign petitions and make donations for big moments that require a lot of capital and advocacy to happen. They were our 2022 Black Ambition Prize winner. Then we have quite a few other companies solving some big problems, whether it’s in the reproductive health space for women, feminine hygiene products, or our 2021 Black Ambition Prize winner, Logistics, who is a construction software management company in the green tech space. So we are seeing these companies not just solving and getting into high-growth areas, but then also monetizing with an impact back into the community.
Support Black Ambition
Black Ambition is a nonprofit initiative launched by Pharrell Williams in 2020 that provides Black, Latino, and HBCU-affiliated entrepreneurs with prize money, high-quality mentorship, and connections to diverse entrepreneurial and investor networks and resources. Learn more at blackambitionprize.com.
Meet the 2023 Black Ambition Winners
Selected from 2,000-plus applicants, over 250 semi-finalists participated in the 2023 Black Ambitionist Mentor Program, a 12-week entrepreneurial curriculum. The top 36 finalists each received a minimum of $20,000 in prize awards, totaling $3.2 million. The final eight pitched live on stage to compete for the $1-million grand prize at Black Ambition’s third annual Demo Day in November 2023. Expert IEP, a parent-facing app that optimizes existing Individualized Education Plans with predictive AI for children diagnosed with a disability, won the $1-million grand prize; ECOMSPACES, a one-stop-shop for e-commerce solutions ranging from product photography to order fulfillment, earned the $250,000 top prize; and Monocle, a social e-reader that creates a community-focused reading experience, received the $200,000 HBCU grand prize.
Pharrell Williams is closing the opportunity gap for entrepreneurs of color.
By Real Leaders
Pharrell Williams knows music. One of the most influential musical artists and producers in hip-hop, R&B, and pop, Williams has created chart-topping hits for household names, earning 13 Grammy Awards and six Billboard Music Awards. (Cue the mega-hit song Happy.)
Then there are his latest accomplishments in fashion design (Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director), film production (Hidden Figures co-producer), and several other companies the serial entrepreneur helped found or collaborate with. But what’s music to Williams’ ears lately is not his own success as much as helping others succeed. He is determined to help Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs propel their startups through his budding nonprofit, Black Ambition.
Williams emphasizes that ambition is limitless, but access is not. Even today, Black and Hispanic founders in the U.S. receive less than 3% of all venture capital allocated. That’s why he is investing capital and resources into Black and Hispanic high-growth startups, working to close the opportunity and wealth gap for entrepreneurs who have historically been left out of traditional investment funnels.
“We can do and be anything we want to,” Williams tells Real Leaders. “We just need the support, we need the resources, and we need the tutelage and the guidance.”
Founded in 2020, Black Ambition wrapped up its third annual awards program in November. To date, the nonprofit has given out nearly $10 million to over 100 Black and Hispanic founders through a general prize track and a track for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Black Ambition has supported an additional 500-plus entrepreneurs with mentorship to strengthen their ventures. To say that Williams is happy with Black Ambition’s impact would be an understatement.
“You gotta pinch yourself because man, this is really happening,” Williams says. “These people are real. The dream is coming true.”
Black Ambition does not only give prize money. As critical as those funds are, the organization also provides other support to set up entrepreneurs for continued success. Semifinalists participate in several months of programming that includes mentorship, resources, community, and networks. Williams feels that he is answering a calling.
“I’ve learned from the mistakes that I’ve made, and I realized how much I paid dearly for it,” Williams says. “And I realize how many good things I’ve done and how they affect things in a much more exponential way. When you see all the parallels and all the patterns, you start to realize there’s this overarching goal of doing good and doing well. It’s a karma credit score. I’m just paying my tithes to the universe, not only leaving the door open, but doing my absolute best to share the codes in the most universal way possible.”
Anti-Systematic Gravity
At its core, Williams defines Black Ambition as anti-systemic gravity, a push to help Black and Hispanic startups gain momentum despite the challenges. It’s a need he witnessed first-hand growing up in the projects in Virginia Beach.
“As a child, I don’t know that I ever had ambitions to be an entrepreneur,” he says. “I had never heard of the word, and I didn’t grow up in a community that had that kind of mentality. Entrepreneurship was not something that we understood to be within the realm of possibility, and there was a hundred million percent no Black Ambition as a construct.”
He continues, “There were lots of Black-owned companies in Virginia Beach and Norfolk. They just would never celebrate it the way we celebrate it now. You didn’t hear about the person who owns the tire company or the landscaping business and was totally crushing it or the person who owns a swath of gas stations. The way that we herald it now is amazing, but we should have been doing that all along. Gravity pulls our race down, and we don’t even know it. Disproportionate access to health care, education, and representation — that’s a gravitational force that pulls down on marginalized people more so than it does for our White siblings.”
Williams considers himself fortunate to have been able to break through this gravitational pull. Born to a handyman and a teacher, the college dropout turned to music to cope with neighborhood shootings and hardships. “Music was one of the greatest distractions,” he says. “The music got us by.”
His career kicked off when he was discovered at a high school talent show by music industry veteran Teddy Riley. Williams later partnered with a friend to establish the production company The Neptunes, promoting and selling the work of pop, hip-hop, and R&B artists, as well as forming an R&B group with the same name.
“When I got into the music industry, eventually I realized, OK, you’re going to be your own publisher, so that’s a business,” he says. “As a musician, you’re making music, so you are making a product, and that product has to be managed. You are going to be known for the person who is supplying this product. The instruments that you use are what help you create or conjure this music. So, you start thinking entrepreneurially just by being a musician.”
Williams produced explosive hits for Jay-Z, Beyonce, Britney Spears, Nelly, Gwen Stefani, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran, and other household names, and while the music side came naturally to him, some of the business side did not.
“The first 10 years, I made so many terrible investments, but I didn’t have anyone around to vet these opportunities and tell me, ‘OK, this is worth your time, this is worth your space,’ and most importantly, ‘this is also worth your financial investment,’” Williams says. He is ensuring that Black Ambition fills that role for entrepreneurs today.
“This is My Purpose”
Williams and his team are forging a way for Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs to “build uninterrupted.” It’s a phrase he uses often within Black Ambition.
“Building uninterrupted means that there is no historical and-or systemic gravity on your concept, that it is able to free float, and exist, and build on its own,” he says. “You’re uninhibited by any kind of gravitational force.”
To help create those opportunities, Williams put Felecia Hatcher at the helm of Black Ambition. As CEO, Hatcher has helped entrepreneurs connect to over $100 million in funding over the past eight years, earning honors from the Obama White House, Harvard, and Comcast, to name a few. She is an author, speaker, business owner, and co-founder of the Black Tech Week conference and The Center for Black Innovation. “Black Ambition is lucky to have her, but so are all of these entrepreneurial minds,” Williams says. “I always look to her. You listen to her speak, and you feel like you can do anything.” (Read Real Leaders’ Q&A with Hatcher.)
Black Ambition also has formed several strong partnerships with leading brands and organizations including Adidas, the Lennar Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Visa Foundation, Heineken, and Chanel. Plus, the nonprofit offers its awardees bi-weekly office hours with proven leaders in marketing, public relations, and brand building with Heineken, Snapchat, Netflix, and others.
“You need as many incredibly well-educated, well-experienced eyes around you at all times, and they should be better than you because if they aren’t better than you, then you’re never going to be better than what you are,” Williams says. “When you get a handful of them around you, wow, you’re about to be lifted.”
Winning recipients attend town hall meetings with Williams and receive life coaching and therapeutic workshops in groups and one-on-one, setting up a holistic career approach.
“It takes a village,” Williams says. “You just need the right people. You need the right energy — and that energy is curiosity, it is ambition, and it is the desire to see the person next to you do well. It is a devotion and a diligence with respectful reciprocation.”
As for fielding the prize applicants, Black Ambition looks for unique and innovative businesses to propel, primarily in the fields of technology and consumer products and services, but also in health care, media and entertainment, and Web 3.0.
“The purpose of a business should be based on its necessity,” Williams says. “It should exist because we need it and we don’t have it. Or if we already have it, it’s because this is the superior version and this is going to change the game. Other than that, it’s just fodder. We don’t need another edition of the same. We need something that is going to level us up.”
In 2023, Black Ambition introduced the So Ambitious HBCU Tour in partnership with Techstars and Thurgood Marshall College Fund. The tour brings entrepreneurial training to historically Black colleges and universities to create new wealth pathways and opportunities for undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurs. Students create real companies with the help of mentors, investors, and experienced entrepreneurs and the support of incubator and accelerator programs, business pitch competitions, boot camps, and access to capital. The tour is targeting Alabama, Florida, Virginia, Louisiana, Maryland, Texas, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.
“It looks so promising,” Williams says. “You see the support we’re getting, the kinds of partnerships we’re forming, and the people who are getting involved, the really creative Black and Brown ideas that are coming in — it’s really inspiring.”
A man of faith, Williams feels divinely aligned with his work for Black Ambition. “I believe that this is my purpose,” Williams says. “I believe that I’m supposed to share the codes, and I believe that there needs to be this organization that helps to share the codes by doing some funding and also really serious strategic advice and mentorship.”
Williams points out the need for Black Ambition to be amplified. “I see a future with Black Ambition chapters or offices all over the world because the Black and Brown diaspora isn’t just in America,” he says. “No matter what position we play in this world, we need to know that we can be anything, and that is the ultimate Black Ambition.”
Removing Barriers, Accelerating Success
Black Ambition CEO Felecia Hatcher gets real about the challenges of Black and Hispanic startups.
Real Leaders: What is Black Ambition, and what are you as an organization set out to accomplish?
Felicia Hatcher: Pharrell was the ultimate visionary creating Black Ambition, and when you think about vision, you also think about how expansive vision can be when it’s tied to legacy. So, I think of all the amazing things that he has done and has yet to do. The entrepreneurs impacted by his vision will be a part of his greatest legacy because those are the ripple effects.
We have 100 entrepreneurs that we’ve invested in up until this point at the three-year mark. A lot of organizations that do similar work have only dreamed of impacting as many entrepreneurs as fast as we can. We understand the premise that not only are we trying to close the wealth gap, but wealth has a need for speed — and a lot of people have gotten really, really comfortable wasting the time of Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs. We know that time is infinitely more valuable than money. So, once they waste that money, waste that time, they cannot get it back.
So, with Black Ambition, we do a few things. One, we’re getting them the resources faster, we’re getting them the money faster, so that they can go out into the marketplace, make decisions, hire people faster, and have a faster impact upon their communities while building really good companies. I think of all the success that the founders have had. We’ll reach the point where we’ve invested just about $10 million into these companies in 2023. They’ve gone on to raise over $92 million in the past three years with all the entrepreneurs that we interface with, and that’s no small feat when you look at the number of less than 3% of all companies actually receiving venture capital investment are Black and Hispanic.
What keeps me up at night is, if this initiative was never founded, these brilliant companies would not have been able to have the impact that they’ve had as well as the ripple and network effect. There are just so many people who stand in the way of this greatness being able to happen, which is the problem that we’re fighting every single day.
RL: What have been some of Black Ambition’s biggest challenges so far?
Hatcher: There are a lot of challenges when you’re building a program that also spans quite broadly in whom we serve — not just early entrepreneurs who are a little bit more seasoned, but then we also fund and support HBCU students. Pharrell and I feel that HBCUs are some of the most fertile but untapped grounds for talent, but that also comes with a level of additional support that’s needed sometimes because they’re very young entrepreneurs who haven’t done significant time in corporate and then decided to leave corporate America and launch a startup, which is what we see oftentimes with our early-stage startups. We make sure that they have the soft skills, support, and training that they need as well as mentorship and programmatic support so they can be globally competitive with what they’re building. We also teach them to be very good stewards of the relationships that often come from Pharrell.
In the business world, everything is a relationship game, whether you like it or not. Being able to be good stewards of those relationships, especially when you’re building a program at scale, is something that we are very careful with, and then really trying to instill that in the entrepreneurs we’re introducing them to, which he has cultivated over the years and we’ve cultivated as an organization.
The other part is funding for the organization. A lot of organizations that made very big commitments in 2020 have walked them back in a moment when we need additional capital. Funding for Black entrepreneurs and startup founders specifically is down 45% in the last year. In a time where the economic climate is a little shaky, those entrepreneurs need capital even more. Having great, strong institutional partners that have been with Black Ambition from the beginning is critical, but then we also have to navigate that day to day to make sure we’re building a sustainable organization that can continue to fund those entrepreneurs at the level in they need and which we’ve deemed to be catalytic for those entrepreneurs. It’s definitely a challenge we navigate every single day.
RL: What does Black Ambition look for in its applicants?
Hatcher: We look at their risk tolerance, how they’re able to navigate crises and change, and their ability to lead as a whole — so what makes them a great leader that not only will allow them to build teams but also to leverage Black Ambition’s initial investment to bring on additional investors. We also look at a level of resource magnetism: Do they have it? Can they attract the resources, people, and buy-in that they need to continue to build a thriving startup in their communities?
Then, we look at the usual stuff — product market fit, the market potential as a whole, the viability of being able to scale and be very good stewards of the resources.
Ultimately, what we’ve been building with Black Ambition with Pharrell’s vision is like a rocket ship for these entrepreneurs. Not every entrepreneur is ready to move and scale as fast as they think they are, so we’re also looking at some characteristics that represent that they can get on the rocket ship that all entrepreneurs hope for and then be able to take it, do something with it, and then ultimately be massive contributors back into the Black Ambition community.
RL: Is impact a common thread among Black Ambition’s winning companies?
Hatcher: When you look across our portfolio of entrepreneurs that we’ve invested in, they’re all for-profit companies, but they have the heart and soul of social impact entrepreneurs. They’re all building something much bigger than themselves with some sort of direct impact back to their communities. It’s an unstated thing that we look for in our selection process.
Community X is one of the companies that immediately comes top of mind because they built a platform that allows people to quickly sign petitions and make donations for big moments that require a lot of capital and advocacy to happen. They were our 2022 Black Ambition Prize winner. Then we have quite a few other companies solving some big problems, whether it’s in the reproductive health space for women, feminine hygiene products, or our 2021 Black Ambition Prize winner, Logistics, who is a construction software management company in the green tech space. So we are seeing these companies not just solving and getting into high-growth areas, but then also monetizing with an impact back into the community.
Support Black Ambition
Black Ambition is a nonprofit initiative launched by Pharrell Williams in 2020 that provides Black, Latino, and HBCU-affiliated entrepreneurs with prize money, high-quality mentorship, and connections to diverse entrepreneurial and investor networks and resources. Learn more at blackambitionprize.com.
Meet the 2023 Black Ambition Winners
Selected from 2,000-plus applicants, over 250 semi-finalists participated in the 2023 Black Ambitionist Mentor Program, a 12-week entrepreneurial curriculum. The top 36 finalists each received a minimum of $20,000 in prize awards, totaling $3.2 million. The final eight pitched live on stage to compete for the $1-million grand prize at Black Ambition’s third annual Demo Day in November 2023. Expert IEP, a parent-facing app that optimizes existing Individualized Education Plans with predictive AI for children diagnosed with a disability, won the $1-million grand prize; ECOMSPACES, a one-stop-shop for e-commerce solutions ranging from product photography to order fulfillment, earned the $250,000 top prize; and Monocle, a social e-reader that creates a community-focused reading experience, received the $200,000 HBCU grand prize.
