Breaking Barriers: Reimagining Business with Integrity, Diversity, and Empowerment

As a Black woman who has always desired to do business uprightly, with honesty and integrity at the center, I have a strong desire to help and support women and girls by paving a new path—one filled with opportunities to empower them. Over the years, I’ve explored many avenues and opportunities in pursuit of making my dreams a reality. Morality is significant to me, so I truly desire to pave this way with integrity, honesty, and high values. It’s not enough for me to exploit the labor of someone else to help make my dreams come true.

A salacious businesswoman isn’t my personal path. As I begin to explore these opportunities and navigate this path, it has truly brought about many challenges. I’ve realized that it wasn’t my dreams that were the problem—it’s the industries themselves. This issue is far greater than I anticipated. This is corruption on a global level. It made me think and observe even more, and it began to answer many of my questions about why I haven’t been able to see the progress I desired. Then I began to look at even the initial steps of starting a business. Why is it plagued with this idea of being “hard”? Why? From the very beginning, it’s something I can’t unsee. From the time of registering a business name, you’re being exploited. To the time of trademarking your business, to every step in between, a business owner is met with an expense at every turn. Add to that the annual recurrence of these expenses, and business owners are being exploited well before the business is essentially off the ground. I refer to this as “government business” exploiting entrepreneurs. I then must ask, at what point do we begin to question this?

Then I began to think about the industries themselves. I am working on a beauty and lifestyle brand that centers melanated women. I started to think about the industries as a whole, and at that point, I realized there is such a small number of women CEOs in the beauty and lifestyle industries—despite women being the largest consumers of these goods. Who’s at the top? As Black women, being the top consumers of these goods, it’s not enough to have our faces represented at the top. This gives new meaning to why things aren’t always working out when we think they should. Could it be because the right people you need to connect with haven’t crossed paths with you yet? I am beginning to see just how deeply important values are and how there are also so many in the space who are willing to act without integrity or values that go beyond just focusing on themselves and greed. Hence, we are where we are right now. There’s not one industry performing successfully without silent exploitation or greed of some sort. It’s something I cannot unsee. This also makes me question the values of those who say they’re doing “business” without values—business that is one-sided and only for their personal gain. With so much of this occurring, it’s no wonder the industries are imploding. 

It’s literally baked into the system. Why is it so hard to imagine a better world where businesses are sustainable, and more than just the few at the top actually thrive? I’m almost certain that the ones who hoard resources and sit at the top—typically white men—are essentially the most unqualified. This is clear. How isn’t there more Black women CEOs, considering we are essentially the most educated demographic in the world? I also have to further note that this very discrepancy is growing and is essentially on its way to being questioned by many. You have executives and CEOs in companies they barely know anything about, and they are only there to take and acquire for financial gain without giving anything back to society or humanity. Now look at the industries—the job markets are all falling before our eyes. It makes me question, what have they been doing REALLY with all the profits acquired? Making outlandish purchases without oversight? Or perhaps showing off for the “boys and the bros” by behaving badly when no one else is looking, all at the expense of company dollars.

When I think of our future, I see more women in leadership positions. And when I say more women, I’m not defaulting to just white women. Because, if I’m honest, I don’t see much success there either. I believe we need and require diversity in leadership. We need to base our new leaders on values, integrity, and accountability. I don’t find white women-only leadership to serve humanity as a collective. They’ve honestly been playing second fiddle to white men for so long that it would be dangerous for us to place hope back in the hands of that community, as they too have served as enablers of white men. We need diversity—a split of power dispersed amongst the many versus solely one. Especially considering how they’ve shown us all exactly how they perform and their tactics. Now, is this all of them? Maybe not. But we can safely say it’s most. Ask yourself, would any white people be okay being led by Black women? Again, I must say it’s most. I will continue to speak more extensively on these topics in future posts. I just wanted to share many of my current thoughts on the world right now.