All Raise’s First National Black and Latinx Media Mastery Cohort Brings Solid Results for Founders
68 program participants. 10 geographies. 21 industries. 100% Black and Latinx Female Founded.
Nearly seventy women. All Black or Latinx. These are not the faces you see when the media covers innovative startup founders — which is precisely why we felt it was important to bring them together.
In 2022, women raised just 2% of all venture capital invested in startups, even though women make up more than a third of startup founders. Less than 28% of start-up founders identify as Black or Latinx. We know that media visibility can amplify the voices of underrepresented founders, helps them raise more capital, and inspire future generations of entrepreneurs, making it an invaluable tool for anyone in the start-up ecosystem, but especially for founders who come from historically underrepresented populations — like Black and Latinx female and nonbinary founders.
All Raise’s Black and Latinx Media Mastery (BLMM) program is positioned to empower founders to get exactly the kind of coverage that will boost their visibility for investors, attract customers, and inspire entrepreneurs alike. Our first national cohort, which concluded March 8 with an in-person graduation celebration, was composed of 68 women, all Black or Latinx, who were ready to learn how to attract earned media. Many have already put their lessons into practice: Dr. Charmain Jackman of Innopsych received coverage in Oprah Daily, and Naomi Thomas of Infinity.Careers appeared in Vogue Business, to name just two graduates who have received recent coverage.
“The talent and creativity that has been part of our first national BLMM program takes my breath away,” said Nafeza Kingston, Senior Program Manager for All Raise and the pilot for the BLMM program. “With 10 US regions and 21 industries represented, these first national efforts further demonstrate why we must pay attention to the founders that aren’t traditionally in the spotlight and yet continue to build real solutions for their communities while providing inspiration for what can be and shifting generational wealth along the way. The success of this program has surpassed our expectations. Participants have already seen strong success with their media placements and we know of several more due to be published. I look forward to continuing this work and providing media access to Black and Latinx female founders.”
Launching a program like BLMM on a national scale would have been challenging if it weren’t for Emily Green and her colleague, Yasmin Cruz Ferrine, from All Raise’s Boston Chapter, along with support from Ita Ekpoudom from All Raise’s New York Chapter, Allison James of GET Cities, Judene Small of All Raise’s Los Angeles Chapter, and Lily Xu of AWS. Emily launched and ran the program in Boston for a smaller, regional cohort. Emily, Ita, and their All Raise chapter counterparts saw the potential to scale the Boston Chapter’s work and serve our national community, and pitched the program to the All Raise HQ team. When the All Raise Boston Chapter first formed in 2020, Emily explained, “We were very fortunate that about 20 Black and Latinx founders were willing to sit together on a Zoom discussion, moderated by Jody Rose and Betty Francisco, to talk about their challenges and share their priorities. Storytelling — engaging with the press, knowing what they want and how to give it to them in a way that helps a founder and new business — was near the top of their list.” Emily said that two of the original Boston chapter leaders were professional marketers, and they realized they could deliver programming centered on that topic.
As our first national cohort’s graduation approached, Emily reflected on the initial BLMM program in Boston. “From the first minutes of the first session, I think we knew BLMM was going to prove useful to some degree for the women who trusted us and joined in.” And then, “After the last session, we started to see almost immediate media coverage for some of the participants. They’d gained some know-how and confidence, and the media had appetite for their stories.”
Fragrance Company Isle de Nature’s Veronica Armstrong, who participated in that first Boston cohort, agreed with Emily’s assessment. “This program helped me refine my media strategy to focus on the publications interested in my product category and founder story,” she wrote in a post-program survey All Raise sent her. “Earned media is gold for early-stage founders; it helps us reach broad audiences and build credibility for our businesses. 10/10 for this program — I have the Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, and Beauty Independent links to prove it!”
Given successes like these, Emily told us, “It seemed obvious we’d want to do it again, and have more women involved.”
Getting more women involved would also require involving more chapters. Emily and her fellow Boston leaders teamed up with our chapters in Los Angeles and New York to think about how to expand the program, then pitched it to the national staff.
Translating the program from a regional to a national offering took work. “Scaling up the program to the national level was an exciting opportunity from the time the program pioneers pitched the idea. It took us about six months to get the program funding and infrastructure in place. From there, we were ready to serve this community and help them amplify their work on a national stage,” Nafeza explained. Thanks to a generous contribution from UBS, we were able to launch the national cohort in January at no charge to participants.
Our first national BLMM cohort included founders from sectors ranging from coaching to education, cosmetics and hair care to podcasting and production, healthcare to home organization. “Some of the founders came to BLMM ready for media coverage now,” Nafeza explained, “and others were ready to absorb so that when their startups are ready for coverage, they’ll be prepared.”
BLMM also provided an opportunity for female Black and Latinx entrepreneurs to get involved with the All Raise community. Sara Agate of the seasonal worker marketplace MuniTask had been trying to get more involved with our programming for some time but felt that it had been a slow process. BLMM allowed her to commit to putting in the time and effort to getting involved with others in the All Raise network. Asked her favorite part of her experience, Sare replied: “The interactiveness. The built-in interactive moments.” These interactive moments between cohort members and with facilitator Van Adams allowed Sara to think about how she was communicating MuniTask’s story to others. “I think it’s helping me prepare for my investor meetings. It’s helping me prepare for articles that I’m writing because I’m trying to get out there just by becoming like the ‘thought leader’ and founder in my industry. It’s getting in magazines. It’s getting in blog posts.”
For Savannah D’Orazio of Casa de la Luna, a feminine hygiene and intimacy start-up, BLMM provided invaluable lessons about not just how to pitch the media, but the state of journalism today. “My favorite piece of BLMM was getting an inside look at what journalists are experiencing on their end. I had no idea that they’re getting that many emails a day. Honestly the numbers were shocking to me. I would’ve thought that more pitches would be accepted.” As a result, Savannah told us, she has completely “abandoned” her old media strategy. “It was unrealistic at this stage for me to approach media in the way that I had. It was inefficient. When Van was explaining [how this works,] it was like, what I’m doing is literally the opposite of what this woman is saying is effective, and I’ve gotta change.”
Tolu Odugbesan of YayVictor, a gaming platform that allows members to win homes, noted that “hands down,” the most valuable part of BLMM was walking away with a first draft of her media kit. “Before BLMM, it was on the to-do list of: ‘Okay, it has to be done.’ But I probably would not have taken the time to do that if I hadn’t come to the program, just because it just feels like there’s so many other things to do.” With this first draft in hand, Tolu is graduating in a perfect position to start getting YayVictor’s story out to the press.
Graduation doesn’t mark the end for the first BLMM national cohort. From here, All Raise is working to: “Create an alum experience that will keep the founders in touch with their cohort and allow them to connect with both their predecessors from the Boston program and with new participants going forward,” Nafeza explained. “My hope is that we create an ecosystem of founders who can rely on each other to advance their startups, and become a resource for press and media looking for these stories.”
During BLMM, the cohort had access to a members-only Slack channel where they could connect over their experiences and share their wins. Even though the program has concluded, the channel remains active, and we hope it will form the foundation of that ecosystem as we turn an eye to future cohorts.
“I’m pleased by how well our first national outing with BLMM went,” Nafeza added. “Going forward, we’d love to see the program run twice a year, in Q1 and Q4. I think we’ll try to keep the cohorts smaller so all of our participants can get more time with and attention from our mentors. I’d also like for us to be deliberate in how we select our participants for each cohort so that we have a group that will mesh well and be at the same level of readiness. We don’t want anyone to feel like they’re behind because they’re not prepared for the same level of media outreach and coverage as some of their peers, and by the same token we don’t want the participants who are a bit further along the path to feel like they’re being held back.”
But, all told, Nafeza concluded, this national outing of the BLMM program was a resounding success.
