There’s a gaping hole in venture capital and other sources of funding for women-of-color-owned businesses in the U.S. Numerous articles outline why excluding and withholding funding from an entire segment / race / gender of business founders is not only morally unsound, but unprofitable. Investing in women — especially women of color — as both workers and innovators is necessary to ensure a healthy economy society, and for investors’ returns.
Where we must focus now is revealing the ways in which investors are complicit (perhaps unintentionally but in practice) in perpetuating biases and creating blockades for innovators based on their gender, race and ethnicity, plus the intersections among these three. Investors can right this wrong by calling out the biases that permeate the venture-capital and financial-services industries. Here are some steps to take to turbocharge the U.S. economy…
