Does Your Business Need Funding? Our SBA Loan Experts CAn Help. Get the right loan for your growing business. A nationwide lender, we can help you with financing for business acquisition or expansion, working capital, equipment, inventory, or commercial real estate. As a Preferred Lender, we offer SBA 7(a) and 504, CalCAP, USDA B&I and BIA guaranteed loans with terms to fit your requirements.
Let’s Talk.
tm
Contact us today. Diane Heyden, Senior Vice President | 949.864.8516 | dheyden@ppbi.com 17901 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 1200, Irvine, CA 92614 | 949.864.8000
www.ppbi.com
Publisher's Message
A
s we look forward to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday held on the 18th of January, the Black Business News applauds the accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. not only as a spokesman for nonviolent and civil rights for African Americans, but also as an advocate and crusader for all under-represented and underserviced sectors of our economy. We embrace this year's theme "Our Work is Not Yet Done". In the spirit of recognition of Martin Luther King (MLK) holiday, President Obama will give his final State of the Union address, embracing the call for change and hope for the future. For many black businesses, their hope for prosperity is tied to the U.S. government for contract and Pubisher/Editor-in-Chief procurement opportunities. As the world's largest buyer of goods and services, the U.S. government spends over $3.8 trillion a year. Subsequently, the government has played a major role in the economic development, sustainability and viability of countless African American businesses in this country. Black-owned businesses have provided the government with goods and services ranging from legal and janitorial services to cancer research and commercial furniture. However, the issue still remains the same "are black businesses getting their fair share of federal contracts?" By law, federal agencies are required to establish contracting goals, such that 23% of all government buys are intended to go to small business enterprises (SBEs). In addition, there are contract goals for womenowned businesses, small disadvantaged businesses, service disabled veteranowned businesses, gay-lesbian transgender and so on. The list has been extended significantly since contracting goals where first enacted to initially address the under-representation of minorities, specifically African Americans. In Los Angeles this year, the Black Business Association (BBA) will host a major federal procurement summit helping African American business owners learn how to navigate the federal maze in search of contracts and business opportunities. In the month of June, the BBA will host its annual award gala in recognition of Black Music Month. This BBA's theme is "The Business Behind the Music." Also, in October of this year, the BBA will be working the California Department of Insurance on the Insurance Diversity Summit on ways to promote diversity and inclusion in California's $259 billion annual insurance industry. In November, once again the BBA will host its annual Financial Lending Pavilion, providing invaluable information on where is the capital and how to get it. In Sacramento, the California Black Chamber of Commerce (CBCC) will host its annual Legislative Welcome Reception & Capital Policy Luncheon, February
Earl “Skip” Cooper, II
Black Business News Group P.O. Box 43159 Los Angeles, CA 90043 USA 323-291-7819 Fax: 323-298-5064
www.blackbusinessnews.net PUBLISHER/EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Earl “Skip” Cooper, II
ASSOCIATE EDITORS Sarah Harris Dean L. Jones Steven Turner
ENTREPRENEUR EDITOR Kim Anthony
ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Linda Ware
PRODUCTION MANAGER Narishima Osei
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dean Jones Linda Ware Ralph D. Sutton Veronica Hendrix Giavanna Foster P. Yvette Thomas LaSandra Stratton
GRAPHIC DESIGN Sarah Harris
STORY EDITORS Wanda Flagg Jennifer Marie Hamilton
PHOTOGRAPHY Ian Foxx Sabir Narishima Osei
CONTENT ADMINISTRATOR La Sandra Stratton
LAYOUT/TYPESETTING Lion Communications Copyright © 2015 by Black Business News All Rights Reserved. The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
see Publisher's Message on page 41 3 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
About
ABOUT THE BLACK BUSINESS NEWS GROUP… The mission of The Black Business News is to inspire and inform public and private sector industry representatives on the importance of smart small business growth. As a versatile source of socioeconomic development activity news, the publications of the Black Business News Group impart current local, national and international industry and social trends and news affecting small businesses across the United States of America (USA), providing guides to greater access to financial capital, management efficiencies, business education, mentorship opportunities and social media networks. The goals of the Black Business News Group include: •
promoting USA-based black-owned business enterprises to a world wide audience.
•
offering business growth enhancing information on education, exhibitioning, international trading, technology, industry trends, and more.
•
cexploring major public and private sece tor contracting methods to educate s. black-owned and operated enterprises.
•
providing an affirmative influence forr emerging entrepreneurs by sharing in-novative design and creative culturall content that exposes them to the history of black enterprises and urges them to participate in the USA’s future.
•
advocating and promoting on behalf of black-owned businesses by promoting the need for expanding an economic foundation that supports an unfettered and self-sustained urban society with USA job creation and economic opportunity, where usiness enterprises. blacks work, live and operate viable business
WWW.BLACKBUSINESSNEWS.NET
2016 Black Business Association Events
March
Salute to Black Women
June
Annual Awards Dinner Black Business News Group Publications Black Business News Black Business News International Black Business News Travel Africa
Contents
Black Business News…January 2016 3
Publisher's Message
Government 8 11 12 13 14 16
President Obama's Last SOTU Message Obama’s Program for a 'New Economy' SelectUSA Investment Summit Power Africa Projects UN Climate Change Conference Executive Action on Gun Control, Violence Reduction 19 "Like" President Obama on Facebook
58 68 70
Charge Your Home – And Your Portfolio (and Your Business) WTA Player of the Year and Comeback Player of the Year. Congratulations Serena Williams and Venus Williams! 6 Digital Tools to Jumpstart Business Productivity in 2016
CommunityPublic Interest
80 A Healthful Legacy: Michelle Obama Looks to the Future of ‘Let’s Move’
Obituary/Memorials 84 86 88 90 91
Meadowlark Lemon, Harlem Globetrotters Great, Natalie Cole Dead at 65 Mattiwilda Dobbs, Pioneering Soprano, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing Dead at 80 Ozell Sutton, Civil Rights Leader
International
95 African Stock Exchanges 96 Ushahidi.com, Changing the Way Information Flows
Columns
76 Take A Look! 108 Shopping Gallery 131 Master Planner 132 Books to Consider... 136 Resource Vault
26
Entertainment 24 BBN Show Biz Buzz
Editorials/Perspectives 28 30 32
Four Ways Martin Luther King Jr. Wanted to Battle Inequality MLK: He Lived and Died for Justice Honoring a King by Exercising our Buying Power
Business 34 38 42 43 49 55
What is Proximity Marketing? XPRIZE Launches $7 Million Ocean Discovery Challenge Marc Williamson Opens his own Shop, in Harlem 2016 Black Fashion Week USA Blacks in the U.S. Gaining Wealth and Education Faster Than Other Groups Winery of the Month - Fou-Dre Vodka
71
5 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
President Obama's Last State of the Union Message (BBN Edits) • View the video of the SOTU at: www.whitehouse.gov/ sotu?utm_source=email&utm_ medium=email&utm_ content=email552-text1&utm_ campaign=sotu. • Read the full speech at: https:// medium.com/@WhiteHouse/ president-obama-s-2016state-of-the-union-address7c06300f9726
M
r. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, my fellow Americans: Tonight marks the eighth year that I’ve come here to report on the State of the Union. And I understand that because it’s an election season, expectations for what we will achieve this year are low. But, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the constructive approach that you and the other leaders took at the
end of last year to pass a budget and make tax cuts permanent for working families. So I hope we can work together this year on some bipartisan priorities like criminal justice reform and helping people who are battling prescription drug abuse and heroin abuse. So, who knows, we might surprise the cynics again. But for my final address to this chamber, I don’t want to just talk about next year. I want to focus on the next five years, the next 10 years, and beyond. I want to focus on our future. We live in a time of extraordinary change -- change that’s reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet, our place in the world. It’s change that can broaden opportunity, or widen inequality. And whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate. We made change work for us, always extending America’s
promise outward, to the next frontier, to more people. And because we did -- because we saw opportunity where others saw only peril -- we emerged stronger and better than before. It’s how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations. It’s how we reformed our health care system, and reinvented our energy sector; how we delivered more care and benefits to our troops and veterans, and how we secured the freedom in every state to marry the person we love. …So let’s talk about the future, and four big questions that I believe we as a country have to answer. First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us -- especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges
8 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Pre Blu D.C
Government like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman? And finally, how can we make our politics reflect what’s best in us, and not what’s worst? Let me start with the economy, Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction. Now, what is true -- and the reason that a lot of Americans feel anxious -- is that the economy has been changing in profound ways, changes that started long before
We’ve made progress. But we need to make more. And despite all the political arguments that we’ve had these past few years, there are actually some areas where Americans broadly agree. We agree that real opportunity requires every American to get the education and training they need to land a good-paying job. And we have to make college affordable for every American. No hardworking student should be stuck in the red. But a great education isn’t all
than ever. I believe a thriving private sector is the lifeblood of our economy. The point is, I believe that in this new economy, workers and start-ups and small businesses need more of a voice, not less. …And this brings me to the second big question we as a country have to answer: How do we reignite that spirit of innovation to meet our biggest challenges? …over the past seven years, we’ve nurtured that spirit. We’ve protected an open Internet, and
esident Barack Obama acknowledges applause from Cabinet members during a reception in the ue Room of the White House after his State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, C. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) the Great Recession hit; changes that have not let up. For the past seven years, our goal has been a growing economy that works better for everybody.
we need in this new economy. We also need benefits and protections that provide a basic measure of security. That’s why Social Security and Medicare are more important
taken bold new steps to get more students and low-income Americans online. We’ve launched next-generation manufacturing see SOTU 2016 on page 10
9 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
many issues where our security is linked to the rest of the world. And that’s why the third big question that from page 10 we have to answer together is how hubs, and online tools that give an to keep America safe and strong entrepreneur everything he or she without either isolating ourselves needs to start a business in a single or trying to nation-build everywhere day. But we can do so much more. there’s a problem. Now we’ve got to accelerate the The Middle East is going through transition away from old, dirtier a transformation that will play energy sources. Rather than out for a generation, rooted in subsidize the past, we should conflicts that date back millennia. invest in the future -- especially Economic headwinds are blowing in communities that rely on fossil in from a Chinese economy that fuels. We do them no favor when is in significant transition. Even as we don't show them where the their economy severely contracts, trends are going. That’s why I’m Russia is pouring resources in to going to push to change the way we prop up Ukraine and Syria -- client manage our oil and coal resources, states that they saw slipping away so that they better reflect the costs from their orbit. And the international they impose on taxpayers and our system we built after World War II planet. And that way, we put money is now struggling to keep pace with back into those communities, and this new reality. put tens of thousands of Americans It’s up to us, the United States to work building a 21st century of America, to help remake that transportation system. system. And to do that well it means Climate change is just one of that we’ve got to set priorities. Priority number one is protecting the American people and going after terrorist networks. We have to take them out. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. America will always act, alone if necessary, to protect our people and our allies; but on issues of global concern, we will mobilize the world to work with us, and make sure other countries pull their own weight. That’s why we built a global coalition, with sanctions and principled diplomacy, to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. That’s how we stopped the spread of Ebola in West Africa. That’s how we forged a Trans-Pacific Partnership to open markets, President Barack Obama works on the State of the and protect workers and the Union address with Director of Speechwriting Cody environment, and advance Keenan and Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, in the Oval American leadership in Asia.
SOTU 2016
Office. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people. Leadership means a wise application of military power, and rallying the world behind causes that are right. It means seeing our foreign assistance as a part of our national security, not something separate, not charity. That's American strength. That's American leadership. And that’s why we need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity, and our openness, and the way we respect every faith. “We the People.” Our Constitution begins with those three simple words, words we’ve come to recognize mean all the people, not just some; words that insist we rise and fall together, and that's how we might perfect our Union. And that brings me to the fourth, and maybe the most important thing that I want to say tonight. The future we want -- all of us want -- opportunity and security for our families, a rising standard of living, a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids -- all that is within our reach. But it will only happen if we work together. …if we want a better politics, it’s not enough just to change a congressman or change a senator or even change a President. We have to change the system to reflect our better selves. We’ve got to make it easier to vote, not harder. We need to modernize it for the way we live now. This is America: We want to make it easier for people to participate. Changes in our political process will only happen when the American people demand it. It depends on you. That’s what’s meant by a see SOTU 2016 on page 19
10 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Editorial
Obama’s Program for a 'New Economy' Includes Wage Insurance Policy By Ned Resnikoff
W
ith his time in office dwindling, President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address was perhaps understandably short on ambitious new policy proposals. But it did include at least one idea that hasn’t received much attention from lawmakers and the media: A plan to subsidize the wages of people who move from one job to another with lower pay. “Say a hardworking American loses his job — we shouldn’t just make sure he can get unemployment insurance; we should make sure that program encourages him to retrain for a business that’s ready to hire him,” said the president during his annual address to Congress on Tuesday evening. “If that new job doesn’t pay as much, there should be a system of wage insurance in place so that he can pay his bills." The United States already has a limited wage insurance system in place, targeted exclusively at workers over the age of 50, and called Re-employment Trade Adjustment Assistance (RTAA). The program is intended to support older workers who lose their jobs and then re-enter the workforce by finding another job that pays less than their previous salary. For the first two years of the new job, RTAA will pay for 50% of the difference between the old salary and the new one. Obama’s call for a wage insurance program was barely a throwaway line in the State of the Union, and administration officials did not
respond to a request for more information about what he was proposing. In addition to specifying an age limit, RTAA in its current form only applies to workers making $55,000 or less annually in their new job. The maximum benefit a worker can receive through the program is $12,000. Unemployed workers over the age of 50 “really have a hard time finding work,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of Economic Policy Institute. Proponents of wage insurance programs see them as a way to ease people back into the labor force while softening the blow that comes from accepting a job with lower wages. In February 2015, longtime wage insurance advocate Robert Litan, then a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, suggested that the policy could be more efficient than straightforward job training programs when it comes to helping workers acquire key jobs skills. “Indeed, economic research has established that, in the absence of a major career change, the best way to get new training is on the job rather than through some government training program, where job prospects are highly uncertain after one finishes,” wrote Litan. “In effect, wage insurance acts as a subsidy for employers to help pay the cost of training new hires, while cushioning the economic pain suffered when unemployed workers take new jobs paying less than what
President Obama www.xxlmag.com
they were earning before layoffs." But Eisenbrey says he opposed one wage insurance scheme that was proposed during the Bush years because he saw it as a way of shoving needy people into jobs that “would otherwise be inappropriate." “Basically the idea was to force you to do this, to dangle it out there and say, ‘Make a decision quickly when you are first taking unemployment insurance, or you’ll lose the ability to get wage insurance.’ And obviously the idea was to get people to take lower paying jobs,” said Eisenbrey. The RTAA program is “better” because workers don’t become ineligible after they exhaust their unemployment insurance, he said. Other countries have toyed with wage insurance schemes. In the mid-1990s, Canada launched the Earnings Supplement Project, which tested a form of wage insurance as a pilot project. The test did not find a significant decrease in the length of unemployment for benefit recipients, but it did find that they were likelier to move into full-time work, a precondition for receiving the benefits. http://america.aljazeera.com/ articles/2016/1/13/obamas-programfor-a-new-economy-includes-wageinsurance-policy.htm
11 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Government
U
.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker has announced that registration is now open for the third SelectUSA Investment Summit to be held June 19-21, 2016, in Washington, D.C. The Summit’s theme is “The Innovation Advantage” and will
feature investment opportunities from every corner of the United States for global investors, while high-profile business and government leaders will share their insights on the latest innovation and trends. “For three straight years, business leaders from around the world have
ranked the United States as the number one place to invest,” said Secretary Pritzker. “The SelectUSA Investment Summit is an opportunity to underscore some of our country’s greatest strengths, including a vibrant culture of innovation, a skilled and productive workforce, and an attractive consumer market. This third annual convening promises to provide international firms and economic developers with tools that will lead to more investment in the United States.” The 2016 Summit will build on the overwhelming success of the last SelectUSA Investment Summit which brought together thousands of participants from more than 70 international markets, including companies and business associations, as well as economic development organizations (EDOs) and other representatives from all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Global CEOs and other business
leaders representing major international firms such as BMW, Carlyle Group, Google, Michelin, Nestlé, Nissan, Samsung, Sony, Unilever, and Walmart, joined entrepreneurs at the Summit who have successfully grown their startups and SMEs in the United States. Following the March 2015 Summit, participants announced approximately $3.6 billion in U.S. investments, supporting an estimated 7,779 U.S. jobs, according to data compiled by fDi Markets through September 2015. “Our first two Summits were oversubscribed, and we are expecting spaces to go quickly again this year,” said Vinai Thummalapally, Executive Director of SelectUSA and former U.S. Ambassador to Belize. “For companies thinking about opening or expanding operations in the United States, there is no more efficient way to meet the right people and discover opportunities from across the entire country.” The 2016 Summit will be held at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. Participants will include international and domestic
12 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Government
USTDA Accepting Proposals for Power Africa Projects
T
he U.S. Trade and Development Agency is expanding its investments in sustainable energy projects across sub-Saharan Africa. An implementing agency of the U.S. government's Power Africa (www.usaid.gov/powerafrica) initiative, USTDA invests in project preparation activities designed to generate renewable and gas-fired power, modernize electric grids and increase energy efficiency. The Agency's programs are available to help African project sponsors prepare bankable clean energy projects. Interested project sponsors in sub-Saharan Africa - or U.S. companies working with African project sponsors - should submit their project concepts to USTDA no later than February 19, 2016 to be considered for funding. To learn more about the Agency's project proposal process, please visit: www.ustda.gov/proposals. Power Africa is a U.S. presidential
initiative that addresses one of the most pressing challenges to sustainable economic growth and development in sub-Saharan Africa - access to electrical power. President Obama launched Power Africa to bring together technical and legal experts, the private sector and governments from around the world to increase the number of people with access to power. Power Africa aims to increase installed power capacity by more than 30,000 MW and create at least 60 million new connections by 2030. USTDA's investments under Power Africa provide critical earlystage planning to advance new power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. In support of these goals, the U.S. Africa Clean Energy Finance (US-ACEF) initiative aligns U.S. government resources to support significant private sector investments in African clean energy infrastructure. Under the program, USTDA is leveraging its
companies of all sizes seeking to establish or expand operations in the United States, as well as U.S. state, regional, and local EDOs; business associations; service providers; and other organizations that facilitate business investment. In addition to an agenda featuring high-profile CEOs, government leaders, and other experts, the Summit will include an exhibition hall where U.S. economic development organizations can host individual or joint booths, display the advantages of their locations, and connect directly with investors. Participants
will also be able to submit topic proposals and potentially present at the SelectUSA Academy, a preSummit orientation that covers the fundamentals of investing and promoting investment in the United States. Interested parties can visit www.selectusasummit.us for more information.
About SelectUSA Housed within the U.S. Department of Commerce, SelectUSA promotes and facilitates business investment into the United States by coordinating related federal government agencies to serve as a
project planning expertise to support activities for private sector transactions. More information, i n c l u d i n g an eligibility checklist, can be found on USTDA's website (www.ustda.gov/program/ regions/sub-saharan-africa/africaclean-energy/us-acef).
To begin the proposal process, please contact Africa@ustda.gov. Further information, including a list of USTDA's regional staff, can be found at: www.ustda.gov/program/ regions/sub-saharan-africa.
About USTDA: The U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) helps companies create U.S. jobs through the export of U.S. goods and services for priority development projects in emerging economies. single point of contact for investors. SelectUSA assists U.S. economic development organizations to compete globally for investment by providing information, a platform for international marketing, and high-level advocacy. SelectUSA also helps investors find the information they need to make decisions; connect to the right people at the local level; navigate the federal regulatory system; and find solutions to issues related to the federal government. For more information, visit www.selectusa. gov.
13 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Commentary
In Paris, the United Nations showed its ability to deliver hope and healing to the world Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations The Paris agreement is a health insurance policy for the planet.
S
eventy years ago, the United Nations was created from the ashes of World War II. Seven decades later, in Paris, nations united in the face of another threat – the threat to life as we know it due to a rapidly warming planet. Governments have ushered in a new era of global co-operation on climate change – one of the most complex issues ever to confront humanity. In doing so, they have significantly advanced efforts to uphold our charter mandate to "save succeeding generations". The Paris agreement is a triumph for people, the environment, and for multilateralism. It is a health insurance policy for the planet. For the first time, every country in the world has pledged to curb their emissions, strengthen resilience and act internationally and domestically to tackle climate change. Together, countries have agreed that, in minimising risks of climate change, the national interest is best served by pursuing the common good. It is an example we could gainfully follow across the political agenda. The victory in Paris caps a remarkable year. From the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction to the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, from the historic Sustainable Development Summit
in New York to the climate conference in Paris, this has been a year in which the UN has proven its ability to deliver hope and healing to the world. Since my first days in office, I have called climate change the defining challenge of our time. That is why I have made it a top priority of my tenure. I have spoken with nearly every world leader about the threat climate change poses to our economies, our security and our very survival. I have visited every continent and met communities United Nations climate change chief Christia and UN Climate Change Conference in Par living on the climate frontlines. I have been moved by suffering agreement on climate change. Photo: AP and inspired by the solutions that will make our world safer and more prosperous. I have participated in every UN climate conference. The three C l i m a t e Summits I President Obama speaks during UN convened Climate Conference mobilised political will and catalysed innovative action by already investing increasingly in a governments, business and civil low-emissions future. The solutions society. The Paris Action Agenda, are increasingly affordable and along with the commitments made available, and many more are at last year's Climate Summit, show poised to come, especially after the success of Paris. that the answers are there. The Paris agreement delivered What was once unthinkable is now unstoppable. The private sector is on all the key points I called for.
14 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
ana Figueres, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, French Foreign Affairs Minister ris president Laurent Fabius and French President Franois Hollande celebrate the
Markets now have the clear signal they need to scale up investments that will generate low-emissions, climate-resilient development. All countries have agreed to work to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees and, given the grave risks, to strive for 1.5 degrees. This is especially important for the nations of Africa, small island developing states and least developed countries. In Paris, countries agreed on a long-term goal to cap global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible in the second half of the century. One hundred and eighty-eight countries have now submitted their intended nationally determined contributions, which show what they are prepared to do to reduce emissions and build climate resilience. These national targets have already significantly bent the
emissions curve downwards. But, collectively, they still leave us with an unacceptably dangerous 3 degrees temperature rise. That is why countries in Paris pledged that they will review their national climate plans every five years, beginning in 2018. This will allow them to increase ambition in line with what science demands. The Paris agreement also ensures sufficient, balanced adaptation and mitigation support for developing countries, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. And it will help to scale up global efforts to minimise loss and damage from climate change. Governments have agreed to binding, robust, transparent rules of the road to ensure that all countries do what they have said they would do. Developed countries have agreed to lead in mobilising finance and to scale up technology
support and capacity building. And developing countries have assumed increasing responsibility to address climate change in line with their capabilities. In acknowledging this historic achievement, I would be remiss if I did not recognise the leadership and vision of the business community and civil society. They have highlighted both the stakes and the solutions. I salute them for their outstanding display of climate citizenship. Now, with the Paris agreement in place, our thoughts must immediately turn to implementation. By addressing climate change we are advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Paris agreement has positive implications for all the sustainable development goals. We are poised to enter a new era of opportunity. As governments, business and civil society begin the mammoth project of tackling climate change and realising the sustainable development goals, the UN will assist member states and society at large at every stage. As a first step in implementing the Paris agreement, I will convene a high-level signing ceremony in New York, on April 22 next year. I will invite world leaders to come to help keep and increase momentum. By working together, we can achieve our shared objective to end poverty, strengthen peace, and ensure a life of dignity and opportunity for all www.theage.com.au/comment/ united-nations-has-proven-itsability-to-deliver-hope-and-healingto-the-world-20151220-glrslx. html?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9ws Roks6vBc%2B%2FhmjTEU5z16u0 oW6G3lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4D TMtmMq%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7b NKc1r2NkQXBfn
15 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Government
FACT SHEET: New Executive Actions to Reduce Gun Violence and Make Our Communities Safer
G
un violence has taken a heartbreaking toll on too many communities across the country. Over the past decade in America, more than 100,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence—and millions more have been the victim of assaults, robberies, and other crimes involving a gun. Many of these crimes were committed by people who never should have been able to purchase a gun in the first place. Over the same period, hundreds of thousands of other people in our communities committed suicide with a gun and nearly half a million people suffered other gun injuries. Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been shot to death protecting their communities. And too many children are killed or injured by firearms every year, often by accident. The vast majority of Americans—including the vast majority of gun owners—believe we must take sensible steps to address these horrible tragedies. The President and Vice President are committed to using every tool at the Administration’s disposal to reduce gun violence. Some of the gaps in our country’s gun laws can only be fixed through legislation, which is why the President continues to call on Congress to pass the kind of commonsense gun safety reforms supported by a majority of the American people.
And while Congress has repeatedly failed to take action and pass laws that would expand background checks and reduce gun violence, today, building on the significant steps that have already been taken over the past several years, the Administration is announcing a series of commonsense executive actions designed to: 1. Keep guns out of the wrong hands through background checks. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is making clear that you must get a license and conduct background checks to sell guns. ATF is finalizing a rule to require background checks for people trying to buy some of the most dangerous weapons and other items through a trust, corporation, or other legal entity.
Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch
Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch has sent a letter to States highlighting the importance of receiving complete criminal history. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is overhauling the background check system to make it more effective and efficient.
Read the complete Fact Sheet Overview at: www.whitehouse.gov/ the-press-office/2016/01/04/factsheet-new-executive-actions-reducegun-violence-and-make-our
The envisioned improvements include processing background checks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and improving notification of local authorities when certain prohibited persons unlawfully attempt to buy a gun. 2. Make our communities safer from gun violence. The Attorney General convened a call with U.S. Attorneys around the country to direct federal prosecutors to continue to focus on smart and effective enforcement of our gun laws. ATF has established an Internet Investigation Center to track illegal online firearms trafficking and is finalizing a rule to ensure that dealers who ship firearms notify law enforcement if their guns are lost or stolen in transit. The Attorney General issued a memo encouraging every U.S. Attorney’s Office to renew domestic violence outreach efforts. 3. Increase mental health treatment and reporting to the background check system. The Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care. The Social Security Administration has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking process to include information in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm for mental health reasons.
16 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
The Department of Health and Human Services is finalizing a rule to remove unnecessary legal barriers preventing States from reporting relevant information about people prohibited from possessing a gun for specific mental health reasons. 4. Shape the future of gun safety technology. The President has directed the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security to conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology and to review the availability of smart gun technology on a regular basis, and to explore potential ways to further its use and development to more broadly improve gun safety. New Actions by the Federal Government
Keeping Guns Out of the Wrong Hands Through Background Checks The most important thing we can do to prevent gun violence is to make sure those who would commit violent acts cannot get a firearm in the first place. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which was created
by Congress to prevent guns from being sold to prohibited individuals, is a critical tool in achieving that goal. Today, the Administration is announcing the following executive actions to ensure that all gun dealers
are licensed and run background checks, and to strengthen the background check system itself: •Clarify that it doesn’t matter where you conduct your business— from a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If you’re in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks. ◦ A person can be engaged in the business of dealing in firearms regardless of the location in which firearm transactions are conducted. ◦ Quantity and frequency of sales are relevant indicators. ◦ There are criminal penalties for failing to comply with these requirements. •Require background checks for people trying to buy some of the most dangerous weapons and other items through a trust or corporation. •Ensure States are providing records to the background check system, and work cooperatively with jurisdictions to improve reporting. •Make the background check system more efficient and effective. The FBI has partnered with the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) to modernize NICS so that the FBI
enforcement of our gun laws. The Attorney General directed the Nation’s 93 U.S. Attorneys across the country to continue to focus their resources on the most impactful cases including those targeting violent offenders, illegal firearms traffickers, dangerous individuals who bypass the background check system to acquire weapons illegally and the “worst of the worst” gun crimes. ◦ The President’s budget for FY2017 will include funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators who can help enforce our gun laws, including the measures announced today.
◦ ATF is dedicating $4 million and additional personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN). In February 2016, ATF is standing up the National NIBIN Correlation and Training Center—which will ultimately provide NIBIN matching services at one national location. ◦ ATF has established an Internet Investigations Center (IIC) staffed with federal agents, legal counsel, and investigators to track illegal online firearms trafficking and to
and USDS include may process background checks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Making Our Communities Safer from Gun Violence The Administration is therefore taking the following actions: •Ensure smart and effective
provide actionable intelligence to agents in the field. This work has led to prosecutions against individuals see Fact Sheet on page 18
17 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Fact Sheet
from page 17
or groups using the “dark net” to traffic guns to criminals or attempting to buy firearms illegally online. •Ensure that dealers notify law enforcement about the theft or loss of their gun(s) upon discovery that it was lost or stolen in transit. •Issue a memo directing every U.S. Attorney’s Office to renew domestic violence outreach efforts.
Increase Mental Health Treatment and Reporting to the Background Check System The Administration is committed to improving care for Americans experiencing mental health issues. In addition to helping people get the treatment they need, we must make sure we keep guns out of the hands of those who are prohibited by law from having them. •Dedicate significant new resources to increase access to
mental health care. •Include information from the Social Security Administration in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm. •Remove unnecessary legal
b a r r i e r s preventing States from r e p o r t i n g r e l e v a n t information to the background check system.
Shaping the Future of Gun Safety Technology Tens of thousands of people are injured or killed by firearms every year—in many cases by guns that were sold legally but then stolen, misused, or discharged accidentally. Developing and promoting technology that would help prevent these tragedies is an urgent priority. We know that researchers and engineers are already exploring ideas for improving gun safety and the tracing of lost or stolen guns. Millions of dollars have already been invested to support research into concepts that range from fingerprint scanners to radio-frequency identification to microstamping technology. As the single largest purchaser of firearms in the country, the Federal Government has a unique opportunity to advance this research and ensure that smart gun technology becomes a reality—and it is possible to do so in a way that makes the public safer and is consistent with the Second Amendment. Today, the President is taking action to further this work in the following way: •Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security to take two important steps to promote smart gun technology. ◦ Increase research and
Jeh Johnson, Secretary, Homeland Security
development efforts. The Presidential Memorandum directs the departments to conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology that would reduce the frequency of accidental discharge or unauthorized use of firearms, and improve the tracing of lost or stolen guns. Within 90 days, these agencies must prepare a report outlining a research-anddevelopment strategy designed to expedite the real-world deployment of such technology for use in practice. ◦ Promote the use and acquisition of new technology. The Presidential Memorandum also directs the departments to review the availability of smart gun technology on a regular basis, and to explore potential ways to further its use and development to more broadly improve gun safety. In connection with these efforts, the departments will consult with other agencies that acquire firearms and take appropriate steps to consider whether including such technology in specifications for acquisition of firearms would be consistent with operational needs. www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2016/01/04/fact-sheet-newexecutive-actions-reduce-gunviolence-and-make-our
18 January 2015 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Education Trade Mission to Africa March 7-10, 2016 Johannesburg, South Africa Accra, Ghana Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire This Trade.gov mission seeks to connect U.S. higher education institutions to potential students and university/institution partners in three African countries: South Africa, Ghana, and an optional stop in Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). The goals of the United States Education Mission to Africa are: • to help participants gain market exposure and to introduce them to the vibrant African market in the countries of South Africa, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire • to help participants assess current and future business prospects by establishing valuable contacts with prospective students and educational institutions/partners; and • to help participants develop market knowledge and relationships leading to student recruitment and potential partnerships. The trade mission will include student fairs organized by EducationUSA, embassy briefings, site visits, and networking events in our target cities of Johannesburg, Accra, and Abidjan. The African continent has a growing middle class, and presently spends up to $900 million on education annually. Participation will be limited to 25 institutions on a first come basis. For more information, contact: Jennifer Woods, jennifer.woods@trade.gov or Debra Rogers at debra.rogers@trade.gov.
Barack Obama on Facebook, "Like" the President
P
resident Barack Obama has set up a page on Facebook through which to communicate directly with the people. Not only the American people, his direct constituency, but the people of the world. Join him not only to be in the know but possibly to share your insight, experience and knowledge with him and all of his followers. Go to https://m.facebook.com/barackobama to view his conversations and/or to sign up to receive posts from the President's facebook site. Get your news directly from the Newsmaker. No middle man (or woman).
SOTU 2016 from page 19
government of, by, and for the people. So, my fellow Americans, whatever you may believe, whether you prefer one party or no party, whether you supported my agenda or fought as hard as you could against it -- our collective futures depends on your willingness to uphold your duties as a citizen. To vote. To speak out. To stand up for others, especially the weak, especially the vulnerable, knowing that each of us is only here because somebody, somewhere, stood up for us. We need every American to stay active in our public life -- and not just during election time -- so that our public life reflects the goodness and the decency that I see in the American people every single day. That's the America I know. That’s the country we love. Clear-eyed. Big-hearted. Undaunted by challenge. Optimistic that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. That’s what makes me so hopeful about our future. I believe in change because I believe in you, the American people. And that’s why I stand here confident as I have ever been that the State of our Union is strong. Thank you, God bless you. God bless the United States of America.
19 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Let Us Help You Grow Your Business to New Heights. To take your business to the next level, it’s essential that you choose the right financial partner. At East West Bank, we offer all the products and services you expect from a big bank with the high level of personal attention you expect from a local bank. Our bankers have over 40 years of experience helping minority businesses reach their financial goals. We look forward to working closely with you to customize a financial solution tailored to your unique situation. For more information about East West Bank and our solutions for businesses, please call: 1.626.768.6729 www.eastwestbank.com
Equal Housing Lender
Member FDIC
Use Your Senses to Spot a Gas Leak To help keep your community safe and secure, use your senses of sight, hearing or smell to alert you to any of the following signs of a natural gas leak. LOOK
WHAT TO DO IF YOU SUSPECT A GAS LEAK • Remain calm • Don’t light a match, candle or cigarette • Don’t turn electrical appliances or lights on or off or use any device that could cause a spark • Natural gas leaking from a plastic pipe can create static electricity which can ignite the gas • Immediately evacuate the area, and from a safe location, call 800-427-2200, 24 hours a day, seven days a week; or call 911
© 2014 Southern California Gas Company. All rights reserved.
• A damaged connection to a gas appliance • Dirt or water being blown in the air • Dead or dying vegetation (in an otherwise moist area) over or near gas pipeline areas • A fire or explosion near a pipeline • Exposed pipeline after an earthquake, fire, flood or other disaster
LISTEN • An unusual sound, such as a hissing, whistling or roaring sound near a gas line or appliance
SMELL • The distinctive odor* of natural gas *Some people may not be able to smell the odor because they have a diminished sense of smell, olfactory fatigue (normal, temporary inability to distinguish an odor after prolonged exposure to it) or because the odor is being masked or hidden by other odors that are present, such as cooking, damp, musty or chemical odors. In addition, certain conditions in pipe and soil can cause odor fade – the loss of odorant so that it is not detectable by smell.
BBN Show Biz Buzz By Linda Ware
Taraji P. Henson, 2016 Golden Globe Winner
T
araji P. Henson handed out cookies to Lady Gaga and Leonardo DiCaprio, among others, as she took the stage to accept the award for
Best Actress in a TV Drama as a nod to her character on “Empire,” Cookie Lyon. Henson delivered an entertaining, free-wheeling speech, which she refused to keep short, and scoffed at the warnings she received on the teleprompter. Henson is the third black actress to ever win the award in this category: her predecessors are Gail Fisher in 1973 for "Mannix" and Regina Taylor in 1993 for "I'll Fly Away." . http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/golden-globes2016-wrap-up-cheers-to-taraji-p-henson-and-rachel-bloom-jeersto-ricky-gervais-20160111 www.mzshyneka.com/2016/01/taraji-henson-cookies-goldenglobe
Denzell Washington Receives Lifetime Achievememt Golden Globe Award
D
e n z e l Washington has taken home another Golden Globe. The actor, 61, accepted the Cecil B. DeMille award, which is presented annually to an individual who has made "an incredible impact on the world of entertainment." Washington thanked the crowd as he was flanked by his family onstage. He appeared to be ad libbing as he thanked his family for support. "I want to thank my mother for convincing my father that we needed more than 25 watt bulbs. He thought we could save money," he said as laughed, noting he was having trouble reading his speech without his glasses. Taraji P. Henson
combines previously unreleased archival footage and interviews with Simone's daughter and friends. The title of the film was taken from a Maya Angelou quote. Nina's daughter Lisa Simone Kelly served as the film's executive producer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Happened,_Miss_ Simone%3F
Earned It: The Weeknd Is Now An Oscar Nominee
T
Denzell & Pauletta Washington His wife Pauletta attempted to assist him, but laughed when she realized she too didn't have her glasses and couldn't help. Washington also thanked his first agents, as well as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who he said "always made me feel like a friend or part of the party." Washington has won two other Golden Globes (for Glory and The Hurricane) and has been nominated an additional five times. www.people.com/people/package/ article/0,,20972047_20978905,00.htm
What Happened, Miss Simone? Earns 2016 Oscar Nomination
W
hat Happened, Miss Simone? is a 2015 biographical documentary film about Nina Simone directed by Liz Garbus. The film opened the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The screening was followed by a tribute performance by John Legend. The film was released by Netflix on June 26, 2015. The documentary
h e Weeknd had a more than impressive 2015 with the international success of his third studio album The Weeknd Beauty Behind The Madness and now the Oscar nominated “Earned It” under the Best Original Song category. This marks the Canadian crooner’s first Academy Award nod for the melody that was featured in Fifty Shades of Grey. “Earned It” was produced by Jason “DaHeala” Quenneville and Stephan Moccio, and written by the 25-year-old artist, a task that EVP and manager at Republic Records, Tom Mackay, said was initially a challenge. www.vibe. com/2016/01/ the-weeknd-oscarnomination
Actors of see BB BBN Show Biz Buzz on page 26
25 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
BBN Show Biz Buzz Color Who Should Have Received an Academy Award Nomination
M
any actors and activists are engaging in a boycottstyle protest for the 2016 Academy Awards presentation because no Actors of Color received even a nomination tis year. The Huffington Post news offered the following list of Actors of Color who should have received a nomination for the 2016 Academy Awards. Watch the films again and see if you agree, then watch the Academy Awards show to hear what show host Chris Rock will have to say. Idris Elba Beasts of No Nation Jason Mitchell Straight Outta Compton Tessa Thompson Creed Will Smith Concussion Benicio Del Toro Sicario Michael B. Jordan Creed Oscar Isaac Ex Machina Shameik Moore Dope Samuel L. Jackson The Hateful Eight http://www.huffingtonpost. com/entry/will-smithwill-not-attend-oscars_ us_56a0ecf3e4b0d8cc1098d26e
Idris Elba
Michael B. Jordan & Tessa Thompson
Samuel L. Jackson
26 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
THE WHITE HOUSE PRESIDENTIAL PROCLAMATION MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., FEDERAL HOLIDAY, 2016 With profound faith in our Nation's promise, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led a non-violent movement that urged our country's leaders to expand the reach of freedom and provide equal opportunity for all. Dr. King joined a long line of heroes and vindicated the belief at the heart of our founding: that humble citizens, armed with little but faith, can come together to change the world and remake an America that more closely aligns with our highest ideals. Dr. King recognized that, as a country built on the foundation of self-governance, our success rested on engaging ordinary citizens in the work of securing our birthright liberties. Together, with countless unsung heroes equally committed to the idea that America is a constant work in progress, he heeded the call etched into our founding documents nearly two centuries before his time, marching and sacrificing for the idea of a fair, just, and inclusive society. By preaching his dream of a day when his children would be judged by the content of their character -- rather than by the color of their skin -- he helped awaken our Nation to the bitter truth that basic justice for all had not yet been realized. And in his efforts, he peaceably yet forcefully demonstrated that it is not enough to only have equal protection under the law, but also that equal opportunity for all of our Nation's children is necessary so that they can shape their own destinies. Today, we celebrate the long arc of progress for which Dr. King and so many other leaders fought to bend toward a brighter day. It is our mission to fulfill his vision of a Nation devoted to rejecting bigotry in all its forms; to rising above cynicism and the belief that we cannot change; and to cherishing dignity and opportunity not only for our own daughters and sons, but also for our neighbors' children. We have made great advances since Dr. King's time, yet injustice remains in many corners of our country. In too many communities, the cycle of poverty persists and students attend schools without adequate resources -- some that serve as a pipeline to prison for young people of color. Children still go to bed hungry, and the sick go without sufficient treatment in neighborhoods across America. To put up blinders to these realities or to intimate that they are inherent to a Nation as large and diverse as ours would do a disservice to those who fought so hard to ensure ours was a country dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal. "We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now," Dr. King once said. As the most diverse country on Earth, ensuring this creed is reflected in our hearts, minds, and policies is the imperative of our citizenship. As Americans of all races and beliefs come together on this day of service to honor the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., let us pledge to recognize the common humanity of all people, regardless of the color of their skin or the station into which they were born. NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 18, 2016, as the Martin Luther King, Jr., Federal Holiday. I encourage all Americans to observe this day with appropriate civic, community, and service projects in honor of Dr. King and to visit www.MLKDay.gov to find Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service projects across our country. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand sixteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fortieth.
BARACK OBAMA
Special Focus
Four Ways Martin Luther King Jr. Wanted to Battle Inequality By Ned Resnikoff
T
oday, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is most often remembered as a crusader for racial equality, not economic justice. But those struggles were inextricably intertwined for the civil rights leader, whose 85th birthday is being honored this weekend. Even during his upbringing, as he wrote in 1958, he knew “that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice.” Much of King’s career reflects this belief. The famed 1963 March on Washington’s full name was actually the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. And in the last year of his life, King poured most of his energy into launching the Poor People’s Campaign, an organization dedicated to advocating for economic justice. While Jim Crow laws are long gone, economic inequality—and especially racially stratified inequality (www.msnbc.com/all/50-years-later-what-happened-thedream)—has intensified in recent years. President
Barack Obama has even referred to inequality as “the defining challenge of our time.” (www.msnbc.com/ hardball/americas-defining-challenge)
Here are some of King’s proposals, many of which seemed radical at the time.
1. Ratify an Economic Bill of Rights In 1968, members of King’s premier civil rights group, the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), drafted a letter demanding “an economic and social bill of Rights” (www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/ economic-and-social-bill-rights) that would promise all citizens the right to a job, the right to an adequate education, and the right to a decent house, among others. “It cannot take more than two centuries for it to occur to this country that there is no real right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for people condemned by the accident of their birth to an existence of hereditary economic and social misery,” wrote the letter’s drafters. While the SCLC was specifically concerned with the ways in which economic inequality perpetuates racial inequality, they made clear that the rights they proposed would apply to all citizens. It sounded radical at the time.
In fact, the effort echoed a proposal made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his 1944 State of the Union Address, when he called for a “second Bill of Rights,” to guarantee all citizens a “useful and remunerative job” and “adequate medical care.
2. Guarantee everyone a basic income, no strings attached King believed that every person was entitled to a livable income, whether they worked or not. In the 1968 book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (https://books.google.com/books?id=ka4Tc URYXy4C&lpg=PP1&dq=Where+Do+We+Go+From+Here: +Chaos+or+Community%3F&pg=PT193&hl=en#v=onepag e&q=Where%20Do%20We%20Go%20From%20Here%3A%20Chaos%20or%20Community%3F&f=false) he called
for unconditional cash transfers to every American citizen. These cash transfers wouldn’t just be enough to scrape by on, either; instead, King thought that a guaranteed income “must be pegged to the median income of society, not at the lowest levels of income.” At the time that King pitched the idea, a guaranteed income didn’t sound quite as utopian as it does now. Even President Richard Nixon had a basic income proposal called the Family Assistance Plan (www. msnbc.com/the-ed-show/whatever-happened-the-idea-justgiving), which he unveiled to the nation in 1969. Nixon’s
plan failed in part because some on the left thought his offer of $1,600 per year for each family of four was not ambitious enough. Other countries have since experimented with a guaranteed income closer to the kind King advocated. The people of Switzerland will soon be voting on a referendum to guarantee every Swiss citizen a monthly check worth $2,800 USD (www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/ whatever-happened-the-idea-just-giving).
3. Build a powerful labor movement King spent much of his career working with labor unions, while also working to push them in a more radical direction. At the time of his assassination, he was campaigning in Memphis, Tenn., on behalf of the city’s
28 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike striking sanitation workers (www. msnbc.com/theed-show/dr-martin-luther-king-jrs-last-campaign). He
delivered his final address, the famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, to a crowd of predominantly black sanitation workers and supporters of their right to form a union. The 1968 Memphis strike was not the first time King had reached out directly to the labor movement. He had been delivering speeches before crowds of union members for years, calling for greater cooperation between the civil rights movement and the labor movement. “The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress,” he told the Illinois State AFL-CIO in 1965. “Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, oldage pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.” (http://kingencyclopedia. stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/address_at_ the_illinois_state_convention_of_the_afl_cio)
But that same year, King also chided the labor movement of his time for failing to wholly embrace the civil rights movement and racial equality. “Its sporadic and limited support has been welcome, but in relation to its essential strength, labor has made inconsequential contributions to civil rights,” he told AFL-CIO New York City District 65. “As the struggle unfolds in the north where labor is particularly strong, its omissions will become more evident and embarrassing.” (www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/ address-afl-cio-new-york-city-district-65)
Revs. Martin L. King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy
to abandon unions, but instead to nudge them towards greater social activism and militancy. “The labor movement, if it is to remain vital, needs to raise the standard of living of all workers, not merely those under its contracts,” he said. “As the relative number of workers in unions drops, the strength of labor will fail if it does not become a social force pressing for greater dimensions of wealth for all those who labor.”
4. Guarantee a job to anyone who can work The very first right to be enumerated in the SCLC’s economic bill of rights was “[t]he Right of every employable citizen to a decent job.” In addition to a guaranteed income for everyone, those who were willing and able to work would be guaranteed a job. “I hope that a specific number of jobs is set forth, that a program will emerge to abolish unemployment, and that there will be another program to supplement the income of those whose earnings are below the poverty level,” King wrote shortly before his death (https://books. google.com/books?id=XMwHyjVVwbAC&lpg=PA303&ots=9 pv2bdohaf&dq=%22This+would+guarantee+a+job+to+all+ people+who+want+to+work+and+are+able+to+work%22&p g=PA303&hl=en).
In recent years, some academics have taken up this call again. Most notably, economists at University of Missouri-Kansas City and Bard College, as well as Duke University public policy professor William Darity Jr., have argued in favor of a government program that would create public sector jobs for anyone who isn’t already employed. A recent poll found that 47% of respondents were at least somewhat sympathetic to the idea (www.msnbc.com/all/guaranteed-jobeveryone). www.linkedin.com/in/ned-resnikoff-7054837
King’s answer to dealing with labor’s “apathy” wasn’t 29 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Special Focus
MLK: He Lived and Died for Justice By Larry Buford
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at March on Washington
T
his is the forty eighth year since Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated during the tumultuous 1960’s. He lived for justice and died for justice. In his 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial he said in part: “[W]e’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our
nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir…It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred
obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” His words that day had a dramatic effect that placed injustice in the spotlight. He stated his case to free his people from “the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” much like Moses
30 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
summoned Egypt’s Pharaoh with “let my people go.” On April 3, 1968 in Memphis – the night before Dr. King died – when he delivered that very moving speech in support of the striking sanitation workers, he was still talking about injustice. He told the audience, “[L]et us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.” He quoted Amos 5:24 "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." I encourage anyone to read that powerful speech in its entirety. Dr. King knew of all the threats being made on his life, and he left instructions just as Moses did for the Israelites after God told him he would not get to the promised land. However, God did allow him to see it. Dr. King ended his speech as if he knew it was his last saying: “Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't
matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.
And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” Other relevant quotes by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” “I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live” WWW.PACENEWSONLINE.COM
Quote of Note “Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a little over a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I will be right there with you as a citizen, inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that helped America travel so far. Voices that help us see ourselves not, first and foremost, as black or white, or Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native born, not as Democrat or Republican, but as Americans first, bound by a common creed. Voices Dr. King believed would have the final word -- voices of unarmed truth and unconditional love.”
Barack Obama www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/12/remarkspresident-barack-obama-%E2%80%93-prepared-delivery-stateunion-address?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_ content=email552-text1&utm_campaign=sotu
31 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Special Focus
Honoring a King by Exercising our Buying Power By Nataki Kambon
T
his year let's honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. differently. Let's not talk about the August 28, 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech and the excerpt that loops about waiting for an elusive utopia.
empowerment and against the injustice against Black people in America. Without mincing words, we are stating that this is the only way to live the legacy. This year if you are going to march, march with your plan
eyes, once we have committed to reinforcing them. Then, through the creation of jobs and community stability, young people can regain faith in adults and elders. That faith and respect will come because you have risen
Instead, let's wake up and carry out the individual call to action Dr. King gave us, five years later in his April 3, 1968 "Mountaintop" speech. Let's not just march and demonstrate for Martin Luther King Jr, then go back to life as usual on Tuesday. Let's heed the call to action and implement the "practical things we can do". You can be the solution to the Black community. You can stand up and choose which businesses will get your dollars and which businesses will not. You can choose to impose economic sanctions as your most powerful statement for
of action to identify and switch to spending with Black owned businesses. Then every day after, march into Black owned businesses, banks, and institutions. March in with love, good intentions, positivity, your wallet, and your credit cards. Don't worry if the ambiance isn't the nicest or it's not located in the fanciest part of town. Don't look at the business today. Look at the business it will be when you do your part. Then, just like the Chinese, Latinos, and Indians, and Europeans, we will watch our most meager stores grow and expand into thriving hubs for jobs, resources, family stability, and community stability right before our
up to put an end to the cycle of young people having to hustle or beg for jobs and livelihood outside of the Black community. You will change the empty statement "you can be anything you want to be" into an inspiring reality for every Black youth in America. When it's your time to go, you can then leave this planet, a part of the legacy of empowerment our children can build upon. Young people all over the country are mobilizing against terrorism, brutality, racism, and injustice. It doesn't work if the only option after the protests are jobs in someone else's corporate America. Adults and elders will be the solution
32 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
of empowerment for our babies, children, teens, and young adults who will be empowered solution for the next generation. It doesn't start with Blackowned factories, distributors, utility companies, and conglomerates appearing out of thin air, tomorrow. It doesn't start with waiting for the
Black celebrities, politicians, the rich, or houses of worship to do something different. It doesn't start with the $1.2 trillion in collective buying power. It all starts, with you, today and your income alone. It starts with only the dollars that come into your hands and household.
Movement to Empower Ourselves and Our Communities: http://www.abibitumikasa. com/forums/showthread. php?p=172970#post172970 www.LetsBuyBlack365.com
33 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Business
What is Proximity Marketing? By Douglas Karr
P
roximity marketing is any system that utilizes location technologies to directly communicate with customers via their portable devices. Uses of proximity marketing include distribution of media at concerts, information, gaming and social applications, retail check-ins, payment gateways, and local advertising. Proximity marketing isn’t one single technology, it can actually be implemented utilizing a number of different methods. And it’s not limited to smartphone usage. Modern laptops that are GPS enabled can also be targeted through some proximity technologies. • NFC – The location of the phone may be determined by near-field communications (NFC www. marketingtechblog.com/near-field-communications)
enabled on the phone connecting to a RFID chip on a product or media. NFC is the technology deployed for Apple Pay and other payment technologies but doesn’t have to be limited to payments. Museums and monuments, for instance, can install NFC devices to provide tour information. Retail outlets can deploy NFC on shelves for product information. There’s a ton of marketing opportunity with NFC technology. • Geofencing – As you move with your phone, your cellular connection is managed between towers. Text message marketing systems can utilize your location to push text messages to only those devices that are within a specific region. This is known as SMS Geofencing (www.marketingtechblog.com/locationbased-services). It’s not a precise technology, but it can be useful to ensure your message is only sent to the target audience you need at the time you want.
• Bluetooth – Retail locations can utilize beacons that can connect to your smartphone. Typically there’s a mobile application that enables the technology and permission is requested. You can push content through Bluetooth, serve local websites from WiFi, utilize the beacon as an Internet access point, act as Captive portal, offer interactive services, and operate with no Internet connection. • Mobile Browser – Internet-enabled device with coordinates enabled by the user via mobile browser. Visit a company site on your mobile device while you’re in proximity of a location, and you can geotarget dynamic content to that individual – whether or not they’re on your Wifi. • Wifi Hotspot – If you’ve ever logged into an airline connection or even a Starbuck’s, you’ve witnessed dynamic marketing content that’s pushed directly to the user via web browser. www.marketingtechblog.com/proximity-marketing
C
hoice Loans has developed this infographic as an overview of Proximity Marketing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs):
34 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Y
ou are invited to attend the How to Do Business with Metro Workshop. This two-hour orientation and business workshop is held on the second Tuesday of each month and provides firms with information on Metro's certification program, vendor registration, contract look-ahead schedules and other useful information. Metro's procurement staff also conducts one-on-one interviews with firms during the workshop. Please note that the workshop starts promptly at 9:30am. Tuesday, February 9, 2016 8:30 a.m.: Registration 9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.: One-on-One with Contract Administrators and Continental Breakfast 9:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.: Program
Metro Headquarters: 3rd Floor, Board Room, One Gateway Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90012 Topics: • • • •
Highway Project Update Procurement Update Certification Update Small Business Prime Update
Speakers: • Jerry Jacobsen, Principal Diversity Economic Opportunity Department • Dr. Irma Licea, Director Finance, Certification and Business Development, Metro
Register here (https://metrodeod.wufoo.com/forms/w152hryt0qgzqxv/)! And to download Metro's Certification Guidelines, click here (https://d1akjheu06qp1r.cloudfront.net/deod/ images/15-0728_ntc_deod_construct_certification_au.pdf). You can also download the Metro Connect Toolkit, and learn about our certification requirements, networking events and SB Prime program at metro.net/ connect. For further questions, please contact Marisela Villar at VillarM@metro. net or via phone at 213.922.2235. 37 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Business
BBN Biz Notes By Black Business News Staff
Driverless Cars Set for Regulatory Green Light
L
ike it or not, the future is autonomous. In fact, it’s already here. By that, I mean the technology largely exists to navigate our roadways. That’s not my opinion, either. It’s an insider’s firm declaration. Last year, Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA) chief Elon Musk said the advancement of technologies to enable self-driving vehicles
( w w w. w a l l s t r e e t d a i l y. com/2015/03/23/driverlesscars-elon-musk) is a “solved
problem.” The only thing standing in the way? Regulators. Look for federal guidance involving drones and driverless technologies to hit in 2016, thereby prompting states to enact legislation. The State of California is
Mercedes F015
already preparing for the inevitable. Several weeks ago, the California Department of Motor Vehicles released a draft of proposed regulations for autonomous vehicles
U
SPS shipping rates have gone up. Pitney Bowes and Target Marketing offer this advice: In this new world of commerce, (www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/ shipping has become even more pubs/newsrel/newsrel15/2015_63). critical as businesses compete www.wallstreetdaily. for and serve clients remotely and com/2016/01/11/tech-trends-2016- connect with their vendors and part-2 suppliers, however, small and medium businesses, in particular, face an uphill challenge to manage . rising costs, increasing complexity and growing volume of sending, which includes everything an organization sends Self-Driving One-person Robot Car out, from parcels and overnight envelopes, to statements and bills. Optimize your package shipping spends: • Streamline. Match your sending strategy to your customer and business needs. Select the best mix of carriers that best serves your customers’ delivery requirements and meets your business objectives. In other words, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. • Eliminate Wasted Space. With both FedEx and UPS imposing “Dimensional Weight Rating” on all parcels, outer packaging should consist only of that which is necessary to properly secure the enclosed items and provide protection during transport. Don’t ship small items in a big box.
Streamline Parcel Processing as Shipping Costs Rise
www.targetmarketingmag.com/ article/usps-shipping-rates-riseon-sunday/#utm_source=today%40-target-marketing&utm_ medium=newsletter&utm_ campaign=2016-01-15&utm_content=us ps+shipping+rates+rise+on+sunday-3
39 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Los Angeles Football Club & PCL Construction Services are pleased to invite you to a Project Information Session to meet our team and learn about anticipated subcontract opportunities associated with the LAFC Soccer Stadium Project.
DATE: January 27th, 2016 TIME: 4:30 P.M. - 6:00 P.M. PCL Construction Services, Inc. 500 North Brand Boulevard, Suite 1500 Glendale, CA 91203 The following scopes will be featured at this event: • • •
site utilities earthwork reinforcing steel
• • •
miscellaneous metals roofing site concrete
• • •
structural steel building skin seating
• •
stairs waterproofing
Firms that are certified MBE, WBE, DBE, DVBE, SBE or plan to become certified prior to bid are highly encouraged to attend.
Registration is required on our website by January 22th, 2016 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lafc-soccer-stadium-subcontractor-outreach-hosted-by-los-angelesfootball-club-and-pcl-tickets-20581014368
Attendees are encouraged to bring their business cards, resumes, and company profile.
economy, we must accept ourselves as we are - diverse, vibrant, relevant from page 3 and aching for opportunities. May our readers, stakeholders and 10th through the 11th. For further community business partners information, please contact CBCC continue to work with the Black at their offices (916) 463-0178 or Business News Group and the via email at cbcc@calbcc.org. BBA as we move to create greater For additional workshops, participation of African American conferences and seminars for the businesses in this country. growth and development of black On a personal level, I am highly owned businesses, please check appreciative and humbled to out the BBA website at www.bbala. receive from the Congress of org and the Black Business News Racial Equality (CORE-CA) the on a regular basis. MLK Lifetime Achievement As Publisher/Editor of the Award. This award is scheduled Black Business News Group to be bestowed on me at a special and President/CEO of the Black presentation at the 31st Annual Business Association (BBA), I Martin Luther King, Jr. Kingdom wish all our readers a healthy and Day Parade Breakfast by its prosperous 2016. As we move leader, Adrian Dove, President/ forward in this rapidly evolving CEO of CORE-CA.
Publisher's Message
The Black Business News Group in collaboration with the BBA will continue to work on behalf of African American businesses, and leverage our corporate stakeholders' commitment to our communities of color. While we have accomplished much as a race and as a country, I must reiterate "Our Work is Not Yet Done!."
41 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Business
Marc Williamson Opens his own Shop, in Harlem By Jan Ransom
Marc Williamson proudly displays some of his line of fashion headwear at his recentlyopened shop, FlameKeepers Hats Club, in Harlem
H
e's brimming with potential. The former co-owner of popular J.J. Hat Center and Pork Pie Hatters has found a home for his new start-up hat shop. Marc Williamson recently opened Flame Keepers Hat Club, a men’s hat store on W. 121st St. near St. Nicholas Ave., stocked with a multitude of classic styles including wool-felt and fur-felt hats with leather sweatbands, newsboy caps, French berets and straw hats from Ecuador and Colombia. “We’re passing the torch of good taste from one generation to the next,” said Williamson, 44. “One of our missions will be to show young men you don’t have to be dressed up — you can wear a hat with jeans or a denim jacket.
Caps go for $35 to $125, and the hats are priced anywhere from $65 to $300. The clotheshorse-turned-headwear aficionado got his start in the business more than 20 years ago as a clerk at J.J. Hat Center, on Fifth Ave. “I thought it was a pit stop,” said Williamson. “I definitely didn’t plan a career in hats, but one thing led to another; (management) pulled me in and groomed me.” He would become a part-owner for 11 years, but says he sold his stake last year. The Woodside, Queens, resident — who was named TimeOut New York’s “Most Stylish New Yorker 2013” — decided to strike out on his own, and left the company in
January. He spent countless hours in the library, poring over books about running a small business. It took some time before he landed the 700-square-foot space, just blocks off the bustling 125th St. corridor and only feet from a row of restaurants on Frederick Douglass Blvd. Initially, he pitched his start-up to brokers associated with locations on Lenox Ave., between 126th and 129th Sts., but they shot him down. But Williamson, who was attracted to Harlem’s energy as well as its appreciation for a fine hat shop, kept pushing. www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ manhattan/veteran-hat-merchantopens-start-up-shop-harlem-article-1.1943581
42 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
2016 Black Fashion Week USA
Welcome to More.
Friday & Saturday February 26th-27th
South Shore Cultural Center Open the door to a hotel you don’t just visit. You own it. Choice Hotels® is committed to achieving more diversity in hospitality with exclusive incentive programs designed to reduce up front costs and provide more support to minority hotel developers. And our commitment doesn’t stop there. Choice Hotels promotes and pursues diversity at all levels, ranging from our workforce to our hotel guests, from our suppliers to entrepreneurs looking to create wealth. Like you. Open the door to hotel ownership opportunities with Choice Hotels. Because you’re not in business for less. You’re in it for more. www.choicehotelsdevelopment.com/#&panel1-2
Early Bird Tickets www.bfwusa.feb26.eventbrite.com www.bfwusa.feb27.eventbrite.com
visit www.blackfashionweekusa. com
for detailed information.
43 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Retirement Plan Is Key to Confidence, Survey Finds Retirement confidence is highest among workers who say they or their spouse have a retirement plan, such as a work-sponsored plan or an individual retirement account (IRA), reports the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). In its 2015 Retirement Confidence Survey, EBRI found that 28% of those with a retirement plan said they were "very confident" about their ability to afford retirement, compared with just 12% of those without a plan. In addition, 34% of workers who said they or their spouse have a retirement plan had saved at least $100,000 for retirement, while 64% of those without a plan say they had saved less than $1,000. Regina
"Those without a retirement plan seem to understand they are likely to have difficulties accumulating adequate financial resources for retirement," said EBRI research director Jack VanDerhei. "Forty-four percent of workers without a retirement plan are not at all confident about having enough money for a comfortable retirement, compared with only 14% of those who have a plan."
Confidence on the rise EBRI found that overall retirement confidence continues to rise from the lows of the 2009 to 2013 period, as 22% of workers were very confident in their prospects for retirement, compared with 13% in 2013. The percentage of workers saying they are not at all confident remained statistically unchanged at 24%.
Retirees tend to be more confident about having a financially secure retirement than current workers, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
Retirees also exhibited a brighter outlook, with 37% saying they were very confident in their ability to afford retirement, compared with just 18% in 2013.
Saving hurdles The cost of living and day-to-day expenses were the top reasons for not saving (or not saving more), with half of workers reporting these factors as deterrents. Despite these factors, however, nearly 70% said they could save at least $25 more per week than they had been setting aside.
Red flags Although the percentage of workers reporting strong confidence in their ability to pay for medical and long-term care costs has increased over the past several years, the 2015 percentages are still cause for concern. Just 18% of workers said they are very confident they will have enough for medical expenses in retirement, while 14% said they were very confident about paying for long-term care costs. Sixteen percent of workers said the age at which they expect to retire has changed over the past year; eight out of 10 of those people said they expect to retire later than planned. Unfortunately, these workers may be in for an unexpected surprise--many retirees reported that they had to leave the workforce earlier than planned due to factors beyond their control.
About the survey The 25th annual Retirement Confidence Survey was cosponsored by EBRI, a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization that focuses on health, savings, retirement, and economic security issues; and Greenwald & Associates, a Washington, DCbased market research firm. The survey was conducted in January and February 2015 through 20-minute telephone interviews with 2,004 people, including 1,003 workers and 1,001 retirees. Full results can be viewed at www.ebri.org.
IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES Regina L. Faison *Wealth Manager/Registered Principal Faison Wealth & Retirement Services C/O Woodbury Financial Services 3070 Bristol, Suite 500, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Office Direct -949-200-8212 * Efax - 949-556-9806 * Regina cell - 714-329-7184 Customer Service Email- service@faisonwealth.com Ph# - 949-939-1194 Website - http://faisonwealth.com "Helping businesses and individuals achieve their life goals" *Securities and Investment Advisory Services offered through Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC and Registered Investment Advisor. Woodbury Financial Services P.O. Box 64284*St. Paul, MN 55164*-800-800-2638. Insurance offered through Faison Wealth and Retirement Services is not affiliated with Woodbury Financial Services, Inc. Faison Wealth and Retirement Services and Woodbury Financial are not affiliated entities.
Faison Wealth & Retirement Regina Faison Wealth Management/Registered Principal 3070 Br4istol St., Suite 500 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 949Ͳ200Ͳ8212 714Ͳ329Ͳ7184 regina@faisonwealth.com www.faisonwealth.com
Page 1 of 2 Prepared by Broadridge Investor Communication Solutions, Inc. Copyright 2016
44 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Business
Chase Bank’s Rodney Hood Announces Funding for Small Businesses in Detroit, LA, NY and Chicago By Yvette Caslin
J
PMorgan Chase & Co. national partnerships executive and corporate responsibility manager Rodney Hood often says “My career in banking began in Atlanta over 20 years ago. I am glad to work with JPMorgan Chase with the responsibility of looking at how to spur minority business development, how do we make capital accessible and how do we do it sustainably?” “A lot of the work we do at JPMorgan Chase is to make sure we are finding opportunities for entrepreneurs to work with our business bankers, to learn about products that we have via SBA loans. We have over 4 million small business customers. As we build out that particular portfolio, we have worked very diligently to serve minority-owned businesses and womenowned businesses. I am proud that we were recently recognized for the third year in a row as the SBA largest lender to minority or African American-owned and to women-owned businesses,” he continues at the 2016 HOPE Global Forums during the “The Minority & Women Business Challenge: Creating Sustainable Growth” working group session which was held at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Hood works in the office of Nonprofit Engagement where he manages relationships with national organizations that assist the bank in strengthening communities, spurring small business development and providing community development, financial capability and affordable housing. To a room overflowing with women, Black and white, and men and millennials, he offers hope. “We look at small business lending differently than ever. We have gone from business banking to Chase for business. Why? We believe that when small businesses come to us looking for loans and for guidance, there is more to us building a relationship with small businesses than just giving a loan. We’re looking at business holistically. Maybe you want to look at us for credit card systems. How are looking at cash-flow analysis? We are looking at the needs of the small business community holistically.”
The attendees shared one common goal, to create and sustain jobs and businesses, as was evidenced following a 30-minute work session among the more than 20 groups. “I look at the glass half full; I look at opportunities. Opportunities that we are seeing at JPMorgan Chase for minority-owned businesses, in partnership with the Detroit Development Fund (www.jpmorganchase. com/corporate/news/pr/ddf-winners.htm), we have launched a $6.5 million fund for African American business to have access to in the city of Detroit. It’s part of our commitment to help Detroit reach its full potential once again. Another fund that we just announced for those living in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, with the Valley Economic Development Center (www. vedc.org/Resources/News/Chase-Donates-$5-millionto-VEDC-to-Boost-Small-Bu.aspx) to create a $3.5 million loan fund to help minority-owned businesses have access to capital. Interested small businesses in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles can learn more about eligibility and the National African American Small Business Loan Fund by contacting VEDC at 1-212-231-4310. These are some of the innovative approaches we are taking in addition to our home loan portfolio. We are partnering with other groups that are working with minority-owned businesses. Another piece that we do that I manage under my corporate responsibility hat, whether it is the Black Chamber, Asian Chamber or Hispanic Chamber [of Commerce], I manage [the relationships] nationally and make sure our partners work with them locally. I encourage everyone to join them. They are tools for access, information and networking.” http://rollingout.com/2016/01/14/chase-banks-rodney-hoodannounces-funding-for-small-businesses-in-detroit-l-a-ny-andchicago/
47 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Business
Udacity Promises Jobs or Money Back after Completing Programming Nanodegree By Kevin Tofel
U
dacity is making it more appealing for would-be programmers to take online classes and get a job: Recently, Udacity announced it would offer a money-back guarantee if students for some programs didn't land a job within six months of graduation
(http://blog.udacity.com/2016/01/anew-job-guarantee.html).
That's a hefty promise because the new offering, called the Nanodegree Plus, costs $299 students a month. It joins Udacity's free class offerings as well as its $199 a month standard Nanodegree programs (www.zdnet.com/article/ how-a-mooc-could-get-you-a-job) that already offered a 50% tuition refund upon completion. Initially, Udacity is limiting
Nanodegree Plus and the full tuition refund to four tracks: Android Developer, iOS Developer, Machine Learning Engineer and Senior Web Developer. Included for the $299 monthly fee are Udacity's career concierge program and custom job preparation. The company expects to expand the Nanodegree Plus tracks over time. While I haven't enrolled in Udacity's Nanodegree program, I
am in the midst of a single Udacity course on Android development with Java. The company had a holiday sale last month, so the $199 course cost me just $10. And overall, I'm impressed. I feel like I had a better overall experience last year at my local community college when taking an Introduction to Computer Science with Java course, mainly because of the social interaction both in and out of the classroom. Still, you can get some of that through the discussion groups in an online course through Udacity. And my community college wasn't offering refunds to those who couldn't find jobs. For those considering a career change or want a new challenge in today's mobile and technical world, the new Nanodegree Plus may be of interest. Aside from the learning aspect, the program might not cost you a dime while also landing you a potentially lucrative new job (http://blog.udacity.com/2016/01/ udacity-graduate-gordon-yoon-how-iended-up-with-job-offers-from-googleamazon.html). ď ƒ www.zdnet.com/article/udacity-promises-jobsor-money-back-after-completing-programmingnanodegree/?tag=nl.e232&s_cid=e232&ttag=e2 32&ftag=TRE6a12a91
page 106
Business
Blacks in the U.S. Gaining Wealth and Education Faster Than Other Groups Study paints often overlooked picture of strength and resilience by Stacey Tisdale Black Enterprise
the number of households earning over $200,000, with an increase of 138%, compared with a total population increase of 74%. • The rate of black high school graduates enrolled in college increased in 2014 to 70.9%, exceeding the rate of all high school graduates in the nation.
I
f you look at most of the headlines about blacks in America, you’ll see a barrage of sad stories dominated by news about pay gaps, wealth gaps, and all sorts of pieces that, it can be argued, take a simplified look at what’s really going on in black America. While the scars of history are still evident in the forms of racism, discrimination, and things like higher unemployment rates than other groups, it is imperative that we look at what’s percolating beneath the surface, and where we are on our evolutionary path. “When black consumers see how much power they have, it will change the way African Americans look at themselves, and allow them to realize what an economic power they have become,” says Andrew McCaskill, senior vice president
“The size and influence of affluent African atlantablackstar.com Americans is growing faster than that of nonof Global Communications at Hispanic whites across all income Nielsen. segments, and the impact is “They have the power to drive the being felt across industries,” said products and services that come Cheryl Pearson-McNeil, senior into their lives and come into their vice president, U.S. Strategic communities,” he adds. Community Alliances and A study by Nielsen, released Consumer Engagement, Nielsen. during the Congressional Black “These larger incomes are Caucus’ 45th Annual Legislative attributed to a number of factors, Conference in Washington including youthfulness, immigration, D.C. this week, upends many of historic educational attainment, and the stereotypes that come with constant, relevant dialogue across the national focus on just the various social media channels that socioeconomic challenges of have an impact on African American blacks. Some of the key findings of decisions as brand loyalists and the report: ambassadors. Savvy marketers are • African American income growth taking notice,” she adds. rates outpaced those of nonTaking notice and dealing with the Hispanic whites at every annual new realities of what it means to be household income level above black in America. $60,000. www.blackenterprise.com/money/ • The largest increase for African blacks-in-the-u-s-gaining-wealth-andAmerican households occurred in education-faster-than-other-groups
49 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Business
What Does the Climate Deal Mean for Business? From NewsDay
H
istory was made when the climate deal was finally signed in Paris in December 2015. The next step is ratification followed by the implementation strategy that most analysts are not confident would be achieved. This series of articles, in the past months, focussed on achieving sustainability, where emphasis was on sparing use of scarce resources and concern for the environment and society at large. After the climate change agreement, it is befitting to consider how the arrangement can benefit society at large. It is necessary that businesses, at a micro level, adopt sustainability that will contribute to the macro goal of reducing climate change. The article shall focus on micro activities, the small changes with the big impact at global level.
The Small Changes Sustainability is hinged on two main objectives of efficient use of natural and economic resources and the respect for society and living things in the course of doing business. The activities are controlled at company level and have a big impact on the climate deal recently signed.
The major challenge for business is trying to strike the balance between efficient and economic use of limited resources and the need to consider the society and the environment in the operation of the business. This is the dilemma of the whole world that can only be addressed if there is consensus of the way forward, after agreeing on the fact that the carbon footprint of industrialised nations is very high at the peril of developing nations, especially Africa. National laws are now a requirement to the signatories of the climate deal to regulate the efficient use of natural resources and ensure that products, production processes and disposal of toxic waste takes into account considerations for the environment and society at large. It is now important that laws are enacted to direct the manner with which scarce natural resources shall be exploited. Further, the laws should prescribe safe methods of processing the natural resources to limit the effects on the environment. The laws need to extend to the protection of the environment and society at large. This implies the enactment of
laws to govern the extraction of resources, to ensure that apart from economic extraction that considers that future generations would also want to benefit from the non-renewable resources, prescribe extraction and purification methods that do not damage the environment. While institutions such as the
Environmental Management Agency are the lead watchdog on the matter, a lot can be done behind the scenes by the manufacturing, mining and energy sectors, as they design the products and services to offer to their customers. Business can initiate sustainability without being compelled by any
50 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
specific laws to support of the climate change deal. Innovation by business is the answer to lessen the investment that the government would require
to achieve sustainability in line with the climate change deal Another small move with big impact is to incorporate sustainability in the procurement policies for both the private and public sector. Most policies define the disposal methods for assets to achieve economy and do not incorporate green designs necessary for achieving global warming targets agreed by the signing of the climate change deal.
Green designs are proactive measures of achieving sustainable development and are the valve for climate degradation. Serious nations shall incorporate sustainable designs and specifications in the business processes, while individual industries shall focus on regulating the extraction and manufacturing processes to limit their effects on the climate in general. www.newsday.co.zw/2015/12/21/ what-does-the-climate-deal-mean-forbusiness/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRo ks6vBc%2B%2FhmjTEU5z16u0oW6G3lM I%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4DTMtmMq%2BTFA wTG5toziV8R7bNKc1r2NkQXBfn
51 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
RIO 2016 OLYMPIC OPPORTUNITIES Stay Current through the Olympic Newsletter: http://www.export.gov/brazil/games/eg_ br_080260.asp Current tenders can be found at: http://portaldesuprimentos.rio2016.com/en/ status/of/the/bids For information on the Games visit http://export.gov/ brazil/games/index. asp www.export.gov/ brazil/games/eg_ br_080260.asp
Black Business Association is joining forces with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and a number of other businesses and community organizations to help promote safe driving through
Sell Your Products & Services on
It Can Wait. http://itcanwait.com 52 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
cbcc@calbcc.org | 916-463-0178| www.calbcc.org
Fou-Dre Vodka
From http://officialblackwallstreet.com/ F black-owned-wine-spirit-brands/
Welcome to Fou-Dre Distillery FOU-DRÉ is a five-time distilled ultrapremium v o d k a , featuring a smooth finish and an unmistakable bottle design. Naturally infused with 100% real fruits (pomegranate, lychee, kiwi, ginger, lime and no added sugars), the 80-proof (40% alcohol by volume), FOU-DRÉ is made for those who appreciate fine living, extravagance, and who assert
themselves with confidence. The trendy, eye catching bottle design begets high-quality ingredients that create a one-of-a-kind product destined to be unlike any other vodka on the market. Owned by Chanel Turner. We hope you will enjoy our vodka. Price Range: $44.99 Purchase: Online E-mail: info@fou-dre.com Website: www.fou-dre.com Address: Headquarters: Bowie, MD Locations: Atlanta, Bowie, Decatur, Fort Washington, Georgia, Lithonia, Maryland, Waldorf, Washington, D.C.
55 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Run. Hide. Fight. Surviving An Active Shooter Event RUN When an active shooter is in your vicinity: • If there is an escape path, attempt to evacuate. • Evacuate whether others agree to or not. • Leave your belongings behind. • Help others escape, if possible. • Prevent others from entering the area. • Call 911 when you are safe.
HIDE If evacuation is not possible, find a place to hide: • Lock and/or blockade the door. • Silence your cell phone. • Hide behind large objects • Remain very quiet. Your hiding place should: • Be out of the shooter's view. • Provide protection if shots are fired. • Not trap or restrict your options for movement.
FIGHT As a last resort, and only if your life is in danger: • Attempt to incapacitate the shooter. • Act with physical aggression. • Improvise weapons. • Commit to your actions.
REMEMBER • • • •
Try to be aware of your environment. Always have an exit plan. Know that in an incident like this, the event is unpredictable and may evolve quickly. The first responders on the scene are not there to evacuate or to tend to the injured; they are well trained and are there to stop the shooter.
911 When Law Enforcement arrives: • Remain calm and follow instructions. • Keep your hands visible at all times. • Avoid pointing or yelling. • Know that help for the injured is on its way. Your actions can make a difference for your safety and survival
BE AWARE! BE PREPARED! From the video Surviving An Active Shooter Event prepared by Homeland Security www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VcSwejU2D0 56 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Business
Charge Your Home – And Your Portfolio (and Your Business) by Shelley Goldberg
A
t times, I bet your home feels like one big chore. You open the door and immediately have to perform a laundry list of tasks before you can even sit down and relax.
But no longer. Today, many of those tasks can be accomplished by pressing a few buttons – often before you even pull into the driveway. In some instances, no action is required at all on your part, assuming you’ve programmed your devices in advance. Whether you call it a power house or smart home, residences are quickly growing more sophisticated. And as investors, we should ask ourselves: Why just purchase these apps and devices when you can also profit by investing in the companies making it all possible?
Move Aside, Jane Jetson Years ago, we watched Jane Jetson make a pizza, think up a perfect outfit, or steam clean her couch just by pressing a few buttons. It all looked so cool and futuristic, but it was a lifestyle we could only dream of. Today, though, the Jetsons’ lifestyle is becoming reality. Anyone can take control of a home using either a remote control or a smartphone and
instantaneously communicate with coffee machines, ovens, locks, window coverings, entertainment systems, lights, thermostats, and fireplaces. And many of these communicators can be set up on one whole-house platform. Here are just a few of the devices that are now available, as well as some of the publicly traded companies that offer connected devices. • A m a z o n Echo – This fun, handsfree device not only maintains playlists and broadcasts your music with 360-degree omnidirectional audio, but it can also read the news, relay sports scores, and much more. Made by com Inc. (AMZN). • Nest Cam – This “seeing eye” streams live video straight to your phone. It’s made by Nest Labs, a company recently purchased by
Hue Go Alphabet Inc. (GOOG). • Google Chromecast – While we’re on Google, try out this fob that casts the entertainment you love from your favorite device to your HDTV. • Hue Go – Change the mood in your home instantaneously with a portable mood lighting device made by the Dutch electronics company Koninklijke Philips N.V. (PHG). • Heat & Glo Fireplace – Have a roaring fire ready and waiting for you before even opening your front door. It even helps cut down on gas usage. Hearth & Home Technologies is a division of HNI Corp. (HNI). • SmartThings – Are you concerned that your home may be burgled while you’re away? By placing this multipurpose sensor
58 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Connect Hub? This product combines the functions of multiple apps in one place. It’s offered by Staples Inc. (SPLS), of course.
Private Eye If you take the private equity or VC route, there’s an abundance of new or privately held companies doing exciting things for the home. They range from programming your shower’s temperature and spray sequence via a touchscreen system, to letting your mattress on your doors or windows, or by placing a motion sensor in your home, you can receive i m m e d i a t e alerts on your smartphone if someone is trying to break in. SmartThings is owned by S a m s u n g SMARTtHINGS Electronics Co. Ltd. (SSNLF). track your sleeping patterns and • Staples Connect – If all of help you make decisions about these gadgets and apps are a bit your daily activities. daunting, why not automate your And now, without even touching entire house with the Staples your kitchen faucet, you can turn it
on by waving your hand. Thus, rather than investing in companies that make gimmicky or trendy technology, invest in names that are solving real life problems. Today’s focus on power homes provides investment opportunities in businesses that save effort and focus on practical and meaningful features. So in 2016, make your life better and easier, reduce your global footprint, and make a bit of profit on the side. Happy New Year and good investing. www.wallstreetdaily.com/2016/01/01/ smart-home-technology
BNN Editor's Note
W
e included this article in the first issue of 2016 to highlight possibly overlooked investment opportunnities (investing is a business) and to remind our readers and the entrepreneur wanna bees that technology advancements are continually opening avenues for new businesses. Get off the beaten path and look into new roads to business start-up and growth. Black Business News
www.facebook.com/pages/Los-Angeles-Worlds-Fair/543396465697684
www.laworldsfair.org
31st ANNUAL KINGDOM DAY PARADE MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016 LOS ANGELES, CA
PRESENTED BY CONGRESS OF RACIAL EQUALITY OF CALIFORNIA (CORE-CA) Adrian Dove, Parade President/CEO
"Our Work Is Not Yet Done" Call us 844-454-6432 or 323-934-3683 for more information regarding the parade www.kingdomdayparade.org
60 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Market Development Cooperator Program (MDCP) Awards - APPAREL/TEXTILE Deadline to Apply: February 29, 2016
J
oin the 40 trade associations and 73 other non-profit industry groups that have benefited from Market Development Cooperator Program (MDCP) funding. MDCP awards of up to $300,000 each are available for projects undertaken to develop foreign markets so that U.S. companies can increase exports. www. export.gov/MDCP Market Development Cooperator Program (MDCP) awards include financial and technical assistance from the International Trade Administration (ITA) to support projects that enhance the global competitiveness of U.S. industries. An MDCP award establishes a partnership between ITA and non-profit industry groups such as trade associations and chambers of commerce. Such groups are particularly effective in reaching small- and medium-size enterprises. The non-profit groups compete for a limited number of MDCP awards by proposing innovative projects that generate exports that create or sustain U.S. jobs. Industry groups pledge to pay a minimum of two-thirds of the project cost and to sustain the project after the MDCP award period ends. On average from 1997 through 2014, projects generated $335 in exports for every $1 of MDCP awards made. Funds may be expended over a minimum of three years at whatever rate makes sense for the project undertaken. The project period may not exceed five years. The principal measurement of performance is exports generated by MDCP project activity. The first MDCP awards, totaling over $2 million, were made in fiscal 1993. While MDCP financial assistance awards go to trade associations and other non-profit industry groups, the ultimate beneficiaries of MDCP-funded projects are individual U.S. businesses and the U.S. workers they employ. The average MDCP project lasts over three years and generates over $96 million in exports, or about $32 million per year (96/3=32). On average, one U.S. job is created or sustained for every $180,000 in exports. Accordingly, the average MDCP project creates or sustains 178 U.S. jobs per year ($32,000,000/$180,000=178).
Who is Eligible to Apply? An MDCP partnership with a group representing a U.S. industry is a great opportunity to help indirectly numerous private companies in an industry. So industry groups are generally eligible to apply for an MDCP award. Such groups by their very nature and composition allow an MDCP partnership with ITA to benefit an entire industry. By contrast, such a partnership with a private enterprise would not have the same industrywide benefit. So, although a private enterprise might be found to be eligible if it could prove that no industry group represented its interests, its MDCP proposal would probably be viewed to benefit one company, the MDCP applicant, first and foremost rather than having a more generalized benefit to the entire industry. Here is a list of some of the types of organizations most often found to be eligible to apply for an MDCP award. Trade associations, State departments of trade, Regional associations of trade and economic development, World Trade Centers, Chambers of commerce, Small business development centers, on-profit industry organizations Learn more about MDCP eligibility and the documentation required for an eligibility determination request at: www.export.gov/mdcp MDCP awards are not grants, but rather cooperative agreements. Like a grant, a cooperative agreement includes financial assistance for the recipient organization. But unlike a grant, the recipient or "cooperator" does not undertake its project alone. A team of ITA professionals assist.
Other Relevant Financial Assistance Programs • Small Business Administration's (SBA) State Trade and Export Promotion (STEP) Grant Initiative: SBA makes grants to state export agencies (STEP), however, SBA does not make grants to individuals, businesses, or industry groups. SBA does have some loan guarantee and other programs that you can explore at the SBA link above. • Sometimes state government agencies offer financial assistance to industry groups or individual companies for export promotion and other competitiveness enhancement undertakings. The State International Development Organizations maintains a list of state agencies, some of which may offer financial assistance. • USTDA grants are usually limited to market feasibility studies and only in developing markets. • U.S. Department of Agriculture: USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service runs programs that are similar to MDCP but which focus on agricultural products. The two most prominent and programs are the Market Access Program and the Foreign Market Development program. • Grants.gov Eligibility: Grants.gov allows organizations to electronically find and apply for more than $400 billion in federal financial assistance. • Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance: CFDA is supposed to be a comprehensive listing of all federal assistance available to the public. This includes financial assistance such as MDCP
FOR
M.L. King Day
ANY SPECIAL OCCASION
OR
Business
WTA Player of the Year and Comeback Player of the Year. Congratulations Serena Williams and Venus Williams! Player of the Year
I
t was a massive year for Serena Williams, with an historic 18th Grand Slam title, the biggest payout in tennis history and YearEnd World No.1 presented by Dubai Duty Free among her many accomplishments. And now another one - she's WTA Player Of The Year. "I'm really grateful and humbled to receive this award," Williams said of Friday's news. "It's been an amazing year. I'm truly blessed to be playing at this level this far into my career. I feel incredibly supported by my team, my family, the tennis community and the fans. I'm just so happy - thank you!" Halfway through the year it
looked like Williams' World No.1 status might be in trouble - she had fallen early at the first three majors
of the year and she was down at No.6 on the Road To Singapore leaderboard, the year-long journey
68 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
to the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global. But once the tour switched back to hardcourts it's like she flipped a switch. Williams won 26 of 29 matches the rest of the season, picking up four more WTA titles at Stanford, Cincinnati, the US Open and the WTA Finals, that US Open run tying her with Chris Evert and
WTA Finals, which didn't stop her from winning the title anyway - and beating Halep back in the final. Williams has now won World Tennis Association Player Of The Year award six times: 2002, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Only Graf (eight) and Navratilova (seven) have won it more times - in fact Graf, Navratilova and Williams
M ti N til f d Martina Navratilova for secondmost Grand Slam titles in the Open Era with 18 (Steffi Graf leads the list with 22 Grand Slams). And by winning the Emirates Airline US Open Series before that US Open run, her $3 million prize money payout was boosted to $4 million - the biggest payout in tennis history, men's or women's. Perhaps the most impressive number for Williams in 2014 was she went 12-1 against Top 10 opponents, showing she brings her very best against the very best time and time again. And the only blemish in that record came against WTA Rising Star Simona Halep in the round robin portion of the
th only l three th l i the th 3838 are the players in year history of the award to win it more than twice.
Comback Player of the Year
A
sensational start and fantastic finish to 2015 propelled Venus Williams back into the Top 10 for the first time in years. The icing on the cake? WTA followers voted her the WTA Comeback Player Of The Year. Williams' season was highlighted by two vintage stretches, winning 18 of her first 22 matches of the year which pushed her as high as No.11 in the world in February, and then winning 18 of her last 21 matches
of the year - which pushed her to No.7 in the world on the November 9 year-end rankings. At 35, she's the oldest Top 10 player since a 38-year-old Martina Navratilova on January 1, 1995. She won three WTA titles at Auckland, Wuhan and Zhuhai, the last two being her two biggest titles in over five years, and she also made the quarterfinals at both the Australian Open (falling to Madison Keys) and US Open (falling to Serena Williams), her first two Grand Slam quarterfinals since 2010. And the biggest reason the former World No.1 is the WTA Comeback Player Of The Year? Because she fell as low as No.137 in the world the week of February 13, 2012, right before she came back from a seven-month lay-off due to the energy-sapping Sjögren's Syndrome disease, something she's had to climb her way back from, step by step, until finally getting back to where she belongs now. "For me, giving up wasn't an option," Williams said after conquering Zhuhai in November. www.wtatennis.com/news/ article/4315841/title/serena-wtaplayer-of-the-year www.wtatennis.com/news/ article/5194504/title/venus-wtacomeback-player-of-the-year
69 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Business
6 Digital Tools to Jumpstart Business Productivity in 2016
2
015 was a banner year for technology changes, meaning now is the time to refocus on your business strategy for 2016, and the tools that can make achieving your goals easier. While you probably already have a few tried-and-true channels to market your business — like email marketing and social media — there are a plenty of tools to help you work smarter, not harder, in the New Year. Because we know one thing about small business owners — you work hard enough. To help, we’ve compiled a list of digital content, social media, and operational tools to complement your marketing efforts and set you up for a productive 2016.
Content 1. Tool: Feedly, an RSS Feed for curating content (https://feedly. com/i/welcome)
Why is it useful? For those who may have used Google Reader in the past, Feedly is a great RSS Feed alternative for curating content and staying up to date with the most current news, announcements, and mainstream trends applicable for your business. Once you’ve subscribed to a collection of different publications or blogs, the program automatically refreshes the feed and aggregates their content into a cohesive stream you can look at quickly and share on social. A second favorite is Pocket (https://getpocket.com), formerly known as ‘Read it Later’, which allows you to save things you read online for later, to read offline on any mobile device or PC.
How can it fit into your strategy? Finding content that your community will find interesting during your busy day can be challenging. Luckily, RSS feeds can help cancel out the distractions that exist in a chaotic Twitter or Facebook feed and focus your attention on the things that are worth sharing. It’s an easy thing to add into your daily routine, and will help you keep up to date with things going on in your industry.
Social media 2. Tool: Discover.ly, a free Chrome extension for finding your connections’ social media accounts (http://discover.ly) Why is it useful? Connect with your email contacts through multiple channels, including social media. Using Discover.ly, you are instantly supplied with links to the social profiles of your email connections on virtually any application — LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Let’s say someone likes your Facebook Page, but you also want to connect on Twitter, Discover. ly can tell you that person’s other social profiles, as well as your mutual connections. How can it fit into your strategy? In an effort to integrate social media into your marketing strategy, Discover.ly can help you stay in touch with key connections through various channels. You’ll save time searching through social media for the right profile or looking for information about an important connection in the Internet abyss. 3.Tool: Pablo, a Buffer app for designing and sharing images on social media quickly (https:// buffer.com/pablo)
Why is it useful? Using Buffer’s
free collection of images, or uploading your own, you can create an image with your own text or logo — Pablo will then resize it to dimensions that fit Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest depending on where you’d like to post. A similar tool we love is Canva (https://www.canva.com), which can do this and help with other similar graphic design needs. How can it fit into your strategy? The importance of visual marketing can’t be overstated. Just because you don’t have a degree in graphic design doesn’t mean you can’t create a great looking image. When using a program like Pablo or Canva, the templates are primed for you to share on social media — all you have to do is add your text or custom photo and instantly you have created a content asset that you can call your own. 4. Tool: Social Analytics, free Chrome extension for social media content analytics (www.
getsocialanalytics.com) Why is it useful? Want to know how ‘viral’ a piece of content has gone on social media? Say you read a great article and want to share it from your profile — using Social Analytics you can get a realtime assessment of how popular a page or post is on various social networks. Likewise, you can easily check how one of your own blog posts is performing from a social sharing perspective with one quick look at Social Analytics. If you are interested in taking a deeper dive into your business’ website analytics, use this Google Analytics guide to help get you started. How can it fit into your strategy? Know ahead of time that you are sharing relevant content that is already growing in popularity, versus guessing whether it will resonate with your audience. Thanks to social media, the amount
70 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
www.nubianskin.com/us of content being shared is massive and fast-paced. If you are going to share something, you want it to make an impact.
Operations 5. Tool: Intuit QuickBooks Online for managing finance, accounting and taxes (http:// quickbooks.intuit.com/online)
Why is it useful? Earlier this year, Constant Contact announced our integration with Intuit’s QuickBooks online — check it out! Constant Contact for QuickBooks Online automatically imports all of your customers from Intuit into your selected Constant Contact email list, so you’re ready to send your next email campaign. You can also easily segment your marketing to customers versus prospects. How can it fit into your strategy? Being able to complete a
transaction with a new customer is awesome. What’s better is having that customer information show up instantly in your email marketing system so you can send them and other new customers a ‘welcome’ or ‘thank you’ email shortly thereafter. Now, you can! 6. Tool: Basecamp for project (https://basecamp. management com)
Why is it useful? Basecamp allows your small business or nonprofit team to collaborate easily by organizing tasks in one centralized location. Another Constant Contact integration to check out, Basecamp automatically syncs critical customer data (like email address, name, opt-outs) between your Constant Contact account and Basecamp. How can it fit into your strategy?
You may be the boss, but what happens when you’re out sick or spending the day carpooling kids to and from school? In favor of a better work-life balance, Basecamp can help you and your team delegate tasks and ensure projects get completed on time though stronger collaboration.
Get more done in 2016. Balancing business goals with the day-to-day marketing, finance, and operational duties of owning a business can get overwhelming. Looking towards 2016, now is the time to implement a positive workflow so that you are set up to achieve the highest level of success in the New Year. Use these tools alongside email marketing to start out with your best foot forward! http://blogs.constantcontact.com/ digital-marketing-tools/
71 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Business
How to Make 2016 the Best Year of Your Life By Jamie Turner, the 60 Second Marketer
T
his year, you are going to accomplish your goals in business, in life, in relationships and in everything else you have planned. How are you going to do this? By shifting the way you think about your goals.
There’s a new concept I’m embracing right now. Instead of focusing on my goals, I’m focusing on the system I have around those goals. In other words, instead of having a laser-beam focus on the end result, I have a laser-beam focus on the processes I’ve put in place to help me accomplish the goals. If you’re like most people, there have probably been times in your life when you wanted to lose a few pounds. The typical approach to that is to focus your attention on the end result — some people even go so far as to create vision boards of what they’ll look like 5 pounds thinner. Again, I’m not against visualization (because it works all the time for me), but imagine the change if, instead of focusing on the 5 pounds, you spent your time focusing on the
system you’re going to use in order to lose the 5 pounds. In other words, instead of saying to yourself “I will lose 5 pounds,” you said these things to yourself: • I will eat protein for breakfast instead of carbs • I will climb the stairs instead of take the elevator • I will eat a salad with chicken for lunch instead of eating beef and carbs • I will have water at dinner instead of a glass of wine • I will eat an orange for dessert instead of having a cookie The key, however, isn’t to just say these things. The key is to shift your focus from losing 5 pounds to living a more healthy lifestyle. In other words, instead of focusing on the 5 pounds, you focus on the system that results in healthy eating. By focusing on the system, two things happen — first, you’re paying attention to the most important aspect of the goals/systems approach. Second, and perhaps more importantly, you won’t feel disappointed if the outcome is different from your expectation. In other words, what if you used the system above, didn’t lose the weight, but lowered your body fat and your cholesterol instead? Would you feel as disappointed because you didn’t lose the 5 pounds? Of course not.
Action Steps for You: • Embrace the Concept: This is a new concept for me and it’s taken me a little while to wrap my mind around it. But now that I have, I’m eager to give it a whirl. I’d encourage you to embrace the concept, too. • Tell a Friend: I’ve found that when I talk about new ideas to my friends and family, the concepts get etched into my brain. When they get etched into my brain, I remember them and put them into action. Be sure to tell a friend about this new system. (Click here to tell your friends via Twitter.) • Give it a Whirl: There’s no point in understanding a concept unless you put it into action. • Track Your Results: What do you want to accomplish? To lose weight? To have more work/ life balance? To have better relationships? By focusing on the systems around those objectives, you might find that you’re more likely to achieve them. I hope you found the excerpt above helpful. I’ve found the new system to be extremely valuable in the latter half of 2015 and am looking forward to leveraging it even more in 2016. I’m convinced 2016 is going to be my best year yet on both a business and a personal front. We have many, many exciting things going on (such as the launch of the Mobile X Festival [www.mobilexfestival.com] and the re-branding of 60 Second Communications to Sixty). I’m looking forward to the ride. More importantly, I’m looking forward to having you join me. Ready for your best year yet? I am. http://60secondmarketer.com/ blog/2016/01/03/how-to-make-2016the-best-year-of-your-life
72 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Money Matters With Nimi
N
imi Akinkugbe is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bestman Games Ltd, the African distributor of customised editions of Hasbro’s Monopoly board game. The City of Lagos Edition of Monopoly, the first African city edition of Monopoly, was launched in December 2012. A special commemorative edition of Monopoly, the Nigerian Centenary was launched in February 2014. Prior to this, Nimi enjoyed a successful banking career spanning 23 years, first at Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc and two years at Barclays Bank Plc as Regional Director (West Africa) for the Wealth & Investment Management Division and Chief Country Officer for Nigeria. Nimi holds a Bachelors Degree from The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and an MBA from Lagos Business School. She subsequently formalized her interest in music by obtaining a Piano Teaching Diploma (ARCM) from the Royal College of Music, London. She is a member of the Artistes Committee of the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON). Achieving financial security ranks as a major source of anxiety and Nimi seeks to empower people regarding their finances. Through the Monopoly board game, speaking engagements, television and radio appearances, social
Ventures. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ajumogobia Science Foundation, which seeks to support the teaching and learning of science, and a member of the Executive Council of Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ). Nimi has been married to Yinka Akinkugbe for 29 years and they are blessed with 3 lovely children aged 28, 26 and 21. Her hobbies and pastimes, which include orchid gardening, boating, writing, playing the piano and travel, play an important role in her life. Nimi’s Christian faith keeps her centered as she navigates life’s journey as a wife, mother, sister, aunt, friend, employer and
media, and her new book "A-Z of Personal Finance," she offers frank, practical insights and advice to create a greater awareness and understanding of personal finance and wealth management issues. She frequently contributes articles that are featured in a host of prominent publications including Genevieve Magazine, leading Nigerian women’s lifestyle magazine, Business Day, The Punch Newspapers, and Forbes Africa. Her articles have also appeared in other publications, In "A-Z of Personal Fina websites and nce," Nimi Akinkugbe, blogs including with a professional care er spanning over 234 Next, Bella two decades in banking and private wealth Naija, Lagos management, provides yo Mums, Eden u with important practical information an Lifestyle and d useful tips on matters The Edition, concerning you and your money. a Kenyan publication. She has been a guest www.moneymattersw on CNBC Africa, ithnimi.com/budget Ebonylife TV, Visit page 125 to order and Studio 53 Nimi's book. Mnet Africa. Through these fora she has been able to encourage e n t r e p r e n e u r. people to take responsibility for this She hopes to inspire other women important aspect of their lives. to attain financial security and Nimi’s directorships include The independence, and to remain Play Pen (Child Development focused on what really matters. Centre), The Daisy Management www.moneymatterswithnimi.com Centre, House of Tara, Financial Derivatives, and Promo Print
Download Nimi's Budge
73 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
t Template
Business
Small Business Investment Companies (SBIC)
favorable rates through the federal government. •And the national economy benefits as the small businesses financed by SBICs continue to create jobs and generate tax revenues.
Where can I learn more? Visit the SBIC Program pages ( w w w. s b a . g o v / c o n t e n t / s b i c program-overview-0), including the FAQ, for more information about the SBIC Program. Still have questions? Email askSBIC@sba. gov.
D
id you know that the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program has been helping high-growth small businesses get financing since 1958? That's right – for more than 50 years, SBICs have facilitated the flow of long-term capital to America’s businesses. There are thousands of small business success stories, but here are a few you probably recognize: Costco, Apple and Staples – just to name a few.
funds (the SBICs) that finance small businesses.
How does it work?
What are the perks?
SBA doesn't finance businesses directly. For the SBIC program, the Small Business Administration (SBA) partners with private investors to capitalize professionally-managed investment
•Small businesses can receive equity capital, long-term loans and expert management assistance. •Investment managers can add to their own private investment capital with funds borrowed at
F
O
U
N
D
MOBILE BLACK BUSINESS DIRECTORY
A
T
I
http://trayvonmartinfoundation.org
Download the App Add your Business Information Be found by new & old clients
O
DO IT TODAY! http://aroundthewayapp.com
N
74 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Business Sell Gift Cards-Gift Card Granny will make sure you get paid the highest prices when you sell your gift cards online. We only work with the most by LaSandra Stratton reputable resellers to provide top-notch service and prompt heck out what these firms payment. and organizations have Just enter the merchant or to offer for your personal interests, personal wealth store on your gift card to see building, and business expansion which exchange site will offer you the most cash. Currently the opportunities. top sell percentage is 93%. Register with GiftCardGranny. www.giftcardgranny.com sing discount gift cards is one com to set up ann account of the easiest ways to save to access all of the services money at all of your favorite and opportunities available. retailers and restaurants. Gift Card If GiftCardGranny does not Granny is the most comprehensive meet your needs check out these Other Gift Card Services. There are many other types of gift cards that you can buy. Gyft. com has a cool e-Gift website, with all the online gift card exchange, helping major brands. GiftcardMall has you buy the cards with the biggest hundreds of brands you can discounts and sell cards to the sites print and mail. GiftCards.com that pay the most. With over 50,000 has customized gift cards that gift cards available from hundreds of different merchants, you won’t you can send with your photo on have any trouble getting great deals the card.
Technology:
Take A Look!
C U
anywhere you want to shop. Buy Gift Cards-Gift Card Granny is the leading online gift card exchange, helping you buy discount gift cards for 1,035 stores and restaurants. You'll find a number of different options to meet your shopping needs including traditional plastic gift cards, online gift cards and e-codes. Currently 103,587 gift cards are available to purchase, and more newly discounted cards are added every day so you can buy gift cards for less.
phones, get multiple extensions, and use the handy app to make and receive calls using your office number. Grasshopper steps: 1. Pick a number for your business 2. Record your custom main greeting 3. Add departments and employees 4. Get calls, voicemails, and faxes anywhere Select from one of the 5 plans $12 to $200 a month.
https://ring. com
T
he Ring V i d e o Doorbell lets you answer your door from anywhere using your smartphone. It features an HD camera with night vision, providing a clear view from your home or business front door, day and night. The Ring Doorbell installs easily in minutes, with no professional help or additional tools required. ired. A built-in chargeable battery lets you install the doorbell anywhere, or connect it to existing doorbell wiring.
http://grasshopper. com
G
rasshopper has been making it easier to start and grow a small business since 2003. Grasshopper is a virtual phone system that allows you to manage your startup via the phone. Grasshopper sets up an 800 number in order to produce a professional image. Plus, you can integrate mobile
76 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
3Doodler Project-Make Shoes Motion-triggered alerts sent via the free Ring app (iOS or Android) notify you of arriving guests and deliveries and cloud recording ensures you'll never miss any activity at your home or office.
Set up and install in minutes. Connect the Ring Video Doorbell to your Wi-Fi network by following our easy in-app instructions. Installation is just as easy and thanks to our installation videos, you have access to step by step instructions on how to mount the device. The Ring Video Doorbell comes with everything you need to install it in minutes on any surface, including wood, stucco, and cement. With the Ring Video Doorbell, you're always in.
https://trello.com
T
rello is the free, flexible, and visual way to organize anything with anyone. Trello is a digital display board. It’s a list of lists filled with cards, used with a team or by yourself. Drag and drop cards between lists to show progress. Add as many people as you need and drag them to cards. Add and reorder lists as you need. Trello adapts to your project, team, and workflow. Trello is simple on the surface, but cards have everything you need to get stuff done. Post comments for instant feedback. Upload files from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive. Add checklists, labels, due dates, and more. Notifications make sure you always know when important stuff happens.
Trello stays perfectly in sync across all your devices, wherever you are. There are fast and intuitive apps for the web, Android phones and tablets, iPhone and iPad and Kindle Fire. Trello will never overwhelm you with features you won’t use. For those who want more out of their boards, there are Power-Ups like calendar, card aging, and voting, that you can turn on. It’s a way to offer more without cluttering things for everyone. If your company or organization needs extra administrative control and team super powers? We made Business Class for you for about $100 per person per year.
http://the3doodler.com
I
f you can scribble, trace or wave a finger in the air you can use the 3Doodler 2.0. The possibilities
are limited only by your imagination. 3Doodler is the world’s first 3D printing pen. We wanted to design a 3D printing device that could be used within minutes, without needing any technical knowledge, software or computers. We also wanted it to be affordable as well as fun, so that anyone could
3Doodle! Compact and easy to use, the 3Doodler allows you to literally draw in the air – whether freestyle 3D sketching or tracing shapes from templates to make larger structures and objects. The "ink" for 3D pens is plastic strips of many types and colors. One of the most frequent questions we get is what is the difference between the different 3Doodler plastics. With the launch of our brand new FLEXY plastic and over 15 new additions to our PLA range, we have share our epic “Complete Guide to Plastics for your 3Doodler” on our website.
This new infographic pitches ABS, PLA and FLEXY head-to-head and showcases their strengths in various use cases. 3Doodler offers special price packages and training programs for educators to use this tool in the class room. There are examples of projects to get you started on your creation path (for fun or profit). Submitted by LaSandra Stratton, Chief Content Administrator of the Black Business News.
77 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Community/Public Interest
A Healthful Legacy: Michelle Obama Looks to the Future of ‘Let’s Move’ By Krissah Thompson and Tim Carman (2015)
F
ive years after she launched Let’s Move, Michelle Obama’s willingness “to make a complete fool of myself” is the most visible part of her campaign to end childhood obesity.
for themselves in their public association with her healthfuleating mission. Her tactics are controversial but also strategic. She and her aides hope they will yield lasting results.
The first lady, joined by students from across the country, plants vegetables during the seventh annual White House Kitchen Garden Planting on the South Lawn of the White House. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)
She’ll dance with a turnip, or Big Bird, or Jimmy Fallon. Behind the scenes, however, she has cultivated partnerships with big business to cut salt, sugar and fat from food. This network of corporate relationships is unlike that of any previous first lady and has helped her sidestep a Republican Congress resistant to the administration’s public health policies. The corporate allies she has sought may in some cases share her views, or, at least, see gains
Like the president, Michelle Obama has less than two years to secure the gains she has made and her legacy as a first lady who accomplished work more substantive than driving fashion choices and YouTube traffic. Obesity rates for children between the ages of 2 and 5 decreased between 2003 and 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and some states recently have reported making progress against obesity in disadvantaged children.
What hasn’t budged in 20 years is this: 1 in 3 American children are overweight or obese, a public health crisis projected to deprive a generation of potential and to generate trillions of dollars in healthcare costs. To combat that, Obama has championed sweeping changes, some encoded in law and some imposed through federal regulatory powers, with a focus on both personal responsibility and helping the poor. Chain restaurants, movie theaters and take-out pizzerias are required to list calories on menus by the end of the year; many have started doing so. The Food and Drug Administration is finalizing the broadest update to grocery nutrition labeling in 20 years. The change that has provoked the most backlash is also the one mandated by a 2010 federal law that passed with broad bipartisan support. The school lunch program, which provides free and reduced-price meals to more than 21 million low-income children, now requires districts to serve more fruit, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein and low-fat dairy products. Congress has edged back some of the changes to school lunches and to the federal program that provides supplemental nutrition to low-income women and their children under age 5. A future Congress or White House could easily unravel the rest. By keeping her critiques of the health crisis focused on helping children and engaging the food industry and public health advocates, Obama quickly found
80 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
that the middle ground is narrow on an issue as fundamental to American life as eating. “This is as controversial as you can get. We were not surprised at all by the pushback,” said Sam Kass, the administration’s top aide on nutrition policy and Executive Director of Let’s Move. He said his boss was determined to work with the food industry — despite the risks and complications — because they have “a huge role to play.” With the blessing of Ms. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, Kass negotiated with Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, on a plan to cut salt, sugar and fat from its product lines.
the White House through the nonprofit Partnership for a Healthier America — have met with modest results, and Obama’s appearances with company heads have raised questions among public health experts who have wondered whether she has given cover to an industry that is lagging behind and dragging its feet. Margo Wootan, the director of nutrition policy at the liberal Center for Science in the Public Interest, a leading health advocacy organization, said it was politically untenable to expect the first lady to publicly denounce a major food company — and she said she appreciated Obama’s efforts to
The First Lady preps for the Hip-Hop album “Songs for a Healthier America” that is a tie into her Let’s Move! campaign that fights childhood obesity. The first lady publicly praised forprofit chains of day-care centers that agreed to abide by guidelines for improved nutrition in after-school programs, brokered deals to market vegetables to children and pushed Americans to drink more water as part of an initiative with American Beverage Association members looking to increase bottled water sales as soft-drink profits fall off. Those efforts — forged outside
work privately with those companies about making improvements to the food they process. “She has a celebrity and a status. That’s a carrot for companies to do better. . . . I have plenty of sticks,” said Wootan, whose organization repeatedly has threatened to sue food companies over their marketing practices. “I don’t have many carrots. Her carrot and my stick work together really well.”
The partnerships fit into Obama’s broader philosophy on food politics, which makes room for junk food and the companies that deal in it. “A Twinkie is not a cigarette,” she told an interviewer as she launched Let’s Move in 2010. “What parents need is just information about what’s in the Twinkie and how much of this can we eat. It’s not that we can’t have a Twinkie.” Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said Obama has been someone the industry could work with. “She’s not trying to be the food police. She brings people together,” Bailey said. “Her role and her interest in this topic accelerated our work.” Her first partnership with the industry was to tout a 2010 pledge by food and beverage manufacturers to cut 1.5 trillion calories out of the food sold in the United States by the end of 2015, via lower-calorie products, altered recipes and reduced portion sizes. Michelle Obama stood beside the head of Kellogg’s, maker of Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops cereals, and claimed a victory against childhood obesity with “a major agreement on the part of the private sector corporations to improve the nutrition of the food that we put on the table or that we grab on the run.” By last year, the companies announced they had beaten their goal and removed 6.4 trillion calories from their sales, four times as many as promised and ahead of schedule. During the same time period, consumer demand for organic food pushed sales up 10 % over the previous year, to $36 billion, according to the Organic Trade Association. “The industry, if you’d like to be a skeptic, could have just projected see Future of Let's Move on page 82
81 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Community/Public Interest
Future of Let's Move
from page 81
the way the market was going and then promised that as the outcome and wanted to score good-guy points from it,” said Kelly Brownell, an obesity expert who serves as dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and has consulted with the White House. “If you’re less skeptical, you say the industry is making a real effort to improve their foods.”
Acting silly to send message Michelle Obama has seen her job as supporting her husband’s administration — which means trying to have some influence while avoiding political risk. Her immense value to the White House is as the charming face of her family’s brand. She works out at least five days a week, slipping out of the White House to Solidcore and SoulCycle classes. She has put her family on a weekends-only dessert diet and showily munches on carrots while hosting groups of kids for lunch. When she created a video dancing with a turnip to the beat of the hit song “Turn Down for What,” it was unexpected but seemed wholly authentic for her (https://vine.co/v/ OqJKZVQami9). The clip has been viewed more than 44 million times on Vine since it was posted in early October. Obama has said, “I’m pretty much willing to make a complete fool out of myself to get our kids moving.. The long view of history has a way of revaluing the causes of the women who served with their presidential husbands. The Highway Beautification Act that Lady Bird Johnson helped enact what now is seen as embodying the foundational principles of conservation of public space. Betty Ford is credited with ending
the taboo on discussion of breast cancer. Laura Bush founded book festivals in Texas and in the District of Columbia that continue to draw tens of thousands of visitors each year. There are no reliable data analytics to er assess the power pit of the bully pulpit in real time, no nt way to count the number of preschoolers convinced byy a Ms. Obama on TV to eatt h their spinach or parentss who see herr on the coverr of Cooking Light and start cooking better meals. Scientific certainty on declining obesity rates and calories cut from ly also is the food supply bli h difficult to establish. In Ms. Obama’s case, her close relationship with the American foodselling titan Wal-Mart may lead to the biggest changes propelled by Let’s Move: healthier packaged food sold to consumers. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, was among the first companies to reach out to the first lady’s office. Their relationship [forged] in the years before Ms. Obama took on childhood obesity - her position on the board of TreeHouse Foods, a key supplier of Wal-Mart’s private-label products, gave her an intimate familiarity with the business and made her a Democratic party figure that a company like Wal-Mart, whose family owners are big Republican
donors, could work with. She stepped down from the TreeHouse board in 2007. As she was finding her footing as first lady in 2009 and developing her plan for Let’s Move, Wal-Mart spent much of the same year surveying its customers
about healthful eating and holding focus groups with customers they referred to as “Wal-Mart moms.” The women told the company that shopping for healthful food was a frustrating and expensive exercise, recalled Jack Sinclair, the former vice president for the grocery division of Wal-Mart U.S. In spring of that year, the company gathered about a dozen health advocates and nutritionists in New York to discuss what it could do to make the food it sold healthier. Dach had been a Democratic campaign strategist before taking the job atop Wal-Mart’s communications shop and saw Obama as someone Wal-Mart should court. Wal-Mart came to the White
82 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
House with a set of goals, including opening stores in rural areas and city neighborhoods where there were no large grocers and adding a “great for you” label that would make it easy for customers to spot which of the company’s store-branded products were most nutritious. The label was placed on fresh and frozen vegetables; unflavored, low-fat or nonfat milk; and yogurt and foods with 100% whole grains. Nutritionists gave it pretty good reviews in terms of rigor but panned the inclusion of 100 % fruit juice. But the idea that most excited Michelle Obama’s office was a pledge by the company to reduce the amount of sugar, salt and fat in the food it sold. Dach and Kass went back and forth for months on the salt and sugar goals, while also discussing how the company could push its suppliers to lower the prices of whole grains, fruits and vegetables. They finally settled on a goal of eliminating trans fats, reducing sugar across the store by 10 % and reducing salt by 25%, compared with items stocked in 2008. The new goals applied to 67 food categories in the store, including yogurt, cereals, boxed meals, tortillas, ketchup and spaghetti sauce. Such changes have the potential to reverberate throughout the grocery industry because of the company’s massive scale. Wal-Mart’s decision to give its nearly 500,000 workers a raise started a minimum-wage race with other retail chains. Its opposition to Indiana’s religious freedom law, voiced directly by its chief executive to the state’s governor, helped force revisions to the act. When Wal-Mart required its suppliers to create tortillas with less salt, suppliers adjusted their recipes. Michelle Obama’s team saw the potential ripple effect: If suppliers
were making tortillas with less salt for Wal-Mart, they wouldn’t make a separate, saltier batch for other grocers. The same thing happened when the company demanded less water in liquid detergent. Wal-Mart’s packages got smaller — and so did everyone else’s. “Taking sugar out of yogurt has been pretty easy for us,” Sinclair said. “I think [manufacturers] just put more in than they realized they had added in the first place.” Reaching the salt goal has been a slower road. The bread it sells now has 16% less salt, the company has reported. Tortillas have 9% less sodium. But low-sodium varieties of some products, such as soup, have been failures at the cash register and scrapped. Fewer than 6% of the products it sells contain trans fats. To celebrate the shift, the first lady held another event with WalMart, touring a Springfield, Mo., store with a few women who shop at the retailer. The first lady’s close relationship with food-selling titan Wal-Mart may lead to the biggest changes propelled by Let’s Move: healthier packaged food sold to consumers.
Working to cement legacy In the next two years, Michelle Obama will have to remain involved in food policy to preserve the gains. As the celebrations for the fifth anniversary of Let’s
Want to get the First Lady's emails directly? Sign up for email updates at: www . whitehouse.gov/ email-updates.
Move continue, the administration is girding for challenges to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, the law behind the first lady’s antiobesity campaign. The White House expects Congress, the food industry and the School Nutrition Association to take another swing at school lunch standards, which opponents say are expensive, drive kids away from the meal program and lead to more food waste. Obama has put in place measures to ensure her work is sustained. Profits from her 2012 gardening book, “American Grown: The Story of the White House Garden and Gardens Across America,” (http://www.amazon.com/AmericanGrown-Kitchen-Gardens-America/ dp/0307956024) went to the nonprofit
National Park Foundation, which is using the funds to offset the costs of the White House garden and finance programs promoting gardening and healthful eating. The Partnership for a Healthier America will continue to operate when President Obama is no longer in office. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently committed an additional $500 million to the effort to end childhood obesity. In recent months, the first lady has vowed to keep at it. “We all know that for everyone in this country who has stepped up to champion this issue, there are plenty of other folks just waiting for us to get bored,” she said at a Let’s Move event in February. “They’re just waiting for us to declare victory and turn our attention to other matters.” It was both an acknowledgment that her legacy is not yet secure and a warning that she will not go away until it is. www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/ food/a-healthful-legacy-michelleobama-looks-to-the-future-of-letsmove/2015/05/03/19feb42c-b3cc-11e4886b-c22184f27c35_story.html
83 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Community/Public Interest-Obituary
Meadowlark Lemon, Harlem Globetrotters Great, Dies at Age 83 By BRUCE WEBER
M
eadowlark Lemon, whose halfcourt hook shots, nolook behind-the-back passes and vivid clowning were marquee features of the feel-good traveling basketball show known as the Harlem Globetrotters for nearly a quarter-century, died on December 27th in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he lived. He was 83. The death was confirmed by his wife, Cynthia Lemon. A gifted athlete with an entertainer’s hunger for the spotlight, Lemon, who dreamed of playing for the Globetrotters as a boy in North Carolina, joined the team in 1954, not long after leaving the Army. Within a few years, he had assumed the central role of showman, taking over from Reece Tatum, whom everyone called Goose, the Trotters’ long-reigning clown prince. Tatum was a superb ballplayer whose on-court gags — or reams, as the players called them — had established the team’s reputation for laugh-inducing wizardry at a championship level. This was a time, however, when the Trotters were known not merely for their comedy routines and basketball legerdemain; they were also a formidable competitive team. Their victory over the Minneapolis Lakers in 1948 was instrumental in integrating the National Basketball Association, and a decade later their owner, Abe Saperstein, signed a 7-footer out of the University of Kansas to a one-
year contract before he was eligible for the N.B.A.: Wilt Chamberlain. By then, Lemon, who was 6 feet 3 inches and slender, was the team’s leading light, such a star that he played center while Chamberlain played guard. Lemon was a slick ballhandler and a virtuoso passer, and he specialized in the long-distance
84 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
hook, a trick shot he made with remarkable regularity. But it was his charisma and comic bravado that made him perhaps the most famous Globetrotter. For 22 years, until he left the team in 1978, Lemon was the Trotters’ ringmaster, directing their basketball circus from the pivot. He imitated Tatum’s reams, like spying on the opposition’s huddle, and added his own. The Trotters played in mammoth arenas and on dirt courts in African villages. They played in Rome before the pope; they played in Moscow during the Cold War before the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. In the United States, they played in small towns and big cities, in Madison Square Garden, in high school gyms, in cleared-out auditoriums — even on the floor of a drained swimming pool. They performed their most entertaining ball-handling tricks, accompanied by their signature tune “Sweet Georgia Brown,” on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Through it all, Lemon became “an American institution like the Washington Monument or the Statue of Liberty” whose “uniform will one day hang in the Smithsonian right next to Lindbergh’s airplane,” as the Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray once described him. Significantly, Lemon’s time with the Globetrotters paralleled the rise of the N.B.A. The league became thoroughly accommodating to black players, competing with the Globetrotters for their services and eventually usurping the Trotters as the most viable employer of top black basketball talent. Partly as a result, the Globetrotters became less of a competitive basketball team and more of an entertainment troupe through the 1960s and ’70s. They became television stars, hosting variety specials and playing themselves on shows like “The White Shadow” and
a made-for-TV “Gilligan’s Island” movie; they inspired a Saturday morning cartoon show. Lemon, as the stellar attraction, thrived in this environment, but he also became a lightning rod for troubles within the Globetrotter organization. As the civil rights movement gained momentum, the players’ antics on the court drew criticism from outside for reinforcing what many considered to be demeaning black stereotypes, and Lemon drew criticism from inside. After Saperstein died in 1965, the team changed hands several times, and in 1978, according to “Spinning the Globe: The Rise, Fall, and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters” (2005), by Ben Green, Lemon was dismissed after a salary dispute. He subsequently formed his own traveling teams — Meadowlark Lemon’s Bucketeers, the Shooting Stars and Meadowlark Lemon’s Harlem All-Stars — and continued performing into his 70s. His website says he played in 16,000 games, an astonishing claim — it breaks down to more than 300 games a year for 50 years — and in 100 countries, which, give or take a few, is probably true. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003. “Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player I’ve ever seen,” Chamberlain said in a television interview not long before he died in 1999. “People would say it would be Dr. J or even Jordan. For me, it would be Meadowlark Lemon.” As a boy in Wilmington, Meadowlark learned basketball at a local boys’ club; he told The Hartford Courant in 1999 that he was so poor that he practiced by using a coat hanger for a basket, an onion sack for a net and a Carnation milk can for a ball. After high school,
he briefly attended Florida A&M University before spending two years in the Army. Stationed in Austria, he played a few games with the Trotters, who were then touring Europe, and he performed well enough to earn a tryout after he mustered out. He was assigned to a Globetrotters developmental team, the Kansas City Stars, before joining the Globetrotters in 1954. Asked about never having played in the N.B.A., Lemon told Sports Illustrated in 2010, “I don’t worry that I never played against some of those guys.” “I’ll put it this way,” he added. “When you go to the Ice Capades, you see all these beautiful skaters, and then you see the clown come out on the ice, stumbling and pretending like he can hardly stay up on his skates, just to make you laugh. A lot of times that clown is the best skater of the bunch.” In 1986, Lemon became an ordained Christian minister; he and his wife founded a nonprofit evangelistic organization, Meadowlark Lemon Ministries, in 1994. “Man, I’ve had a good run,” he said at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony, recalling the first time he saw the Globetrotters play, in a newsreel in a movie theater in Wilmington when he was 11. “When they got to the basketball court, they seemed to make that ball talk,” he said. “I said, ‘That’s mine; this is for me.’ I was receiving a vision. I was receiving a dream in my heart.” www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/ sports/basketball/meadowlark-lemonharlem-globetrotter-who-playedbasketball-and-pranks-with-virtuositydies-at-83.html?action=click&pgt ype=Homepage&clickSource=sto ry-heading&module=second-columnregion&region=top-news&WT.nav=topnews&_r=0
85 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Community/Public Interest
Natalie Cole Dead at 65: R&B Singer was Daughter of Nat King Cole By Larry McShane
C
hart-topping R&B singer Natalie Cole, who followed her legendary father into the music business with hits like “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)” and “Unforgettable,” died at age 65. Cole, who had struggled with a variety of health issues in recent
years, died Thursday night, according to publicist Maureen O’Connor. The cause of death was reportedly congestive heart failure. A physically weakened Cole, winner of nine Grammy Awards, was forced to cancel a string of concert performances over the last
A young Natalie Cole with her father Nat "King" Cole
three months after a recurrence of hepatitis C linked to her earlier drug abuse. The daughter of music icon Nat (King) Cole scored a huge 1991 hit with “Unforgettable” — a virtual duet with her late father. Natalie was just 15 when her father died in 1965, a decade before his daughter launched her own solo recording career. The album “Unforgettable ... With Love” spent five weeks at No. 1 on the pop charts, sold more than 14 million copies
86 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
worldwide and won six Grammy Awards. But her career exploded with her 1975 debut album that included the massive hit single “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)” and a pair of Grammys for Best New Artist and Best Female R&B Performance.
Cole initially struggled with success, battling a devastating cocaine addiction until her manager sent her “kicking and screaming” to drug rehab in 1983, the singer recalled. She had previously experimented with drugs like LSD and heroin, but
it was cocaine that sent her into a spiral as her career and marriage faltered. A first trip to rehab failed, but the second one took — and she remained sober for the remainder of her life. Her career was soon back on track with her hit cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac,” along with the singles “Jump Start My Heart” and “I Live for Your Love.” Cole, who received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, wrote a pair of memoirs and starred in a 2001 made-for-TV movie “Livin’ For Love: The Natalie Cole Story." In 2009, she received a kidney from an anonymous donor after hepatitis C forced her into dialysis. Cole became a spokesperson for the University Kidney Research Organization, a group dedicated to eradicating kidney disease. She appeared in June 2014 at the Apollo Theater’s 80th birthday celebration. www.nydailynews.com/ entertainment/music/singer-nataliecole-dead-65-article-1.2482580
www.blackenterprise.com/es
Community/Public Interest-Obituary
Mattiwilda Dobbs, Pioneering Soprano, Dies at 90 By MARGALIT FOX
M
attiwilda Dobbs, a coloratura soprano who was the third AfricanAmerican to appear as a principal singer with the Metropolitan Opera, died on Tuesday at her home in Atlanta. She was 90. Her death was confirmed by a niece, Michele Jordan. Though Ms. Dobbs’s voice was not immense, she was routinely praised by critics for its crystalline purity and supple agility, and for her impeccable intonation, sensitive musicianship and captivating stage presence. She also had a highly regarded international career as a recitalist, singing at Town Hall in New York and on other celebrated stages, and was especially renowned as an interpreter of Schubert lieder. When Ms. Dobbs made her Met debut, as Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” on Nov. 9, 1956, she had already sung to great acclaim at La Scala in Milan, where she was the first black principal singer; Covent Garden in London; and the San Francisco Opera, where she had made her United States operatic debut, as the Queen of Shemakha in RimskyKorsakov’s “Le Coq d’Or,” in 1955. At the Met, she was preceded by two black singers: the contralto Marian Anderson, who made her debut in January 1955, and the
baritone Robert McFerrin, who made his a few weeks later. (Mr. McFerrin was the father of the jazz singer Bobby McFerrin.) Reviewing Ms. Dobbs’s Met debut, opposite the baritone Leonard Warren, Howard Taubman
wrote in The New York Times: “The young soprano has a voice of substance and quality, well
88 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
placed and expertly controlled. Her singing is true, flexible at the top in coloratura passages and glowing in texture throughout the scale.” The first black woman to be offered a long-term contract by the Met, Ms. Dobbs appeared with the company 29 times through 1964. Her roles there included Oscar the pageboy (sung by a soprano) in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera”; Zerlina in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”; and the title part in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” for which, The Daily News reported in 1957, the audience summoned her back for nine curtain calls after she had sung her mad scene. If Ms. Dobbs is less well remembered today than some singers of her era, that is partly because she made relatively few recordings. It is also because her debut fell between the historic advent of Ms. Anderson and the blazing ascendance of Leontyne Price, widely considered the first black operatic superstar, who made her Met debut in 1961. What was more, Ms. Dobbs happened to have joined the Met as part of the incoming class of 1956-57 — a group of newly hired principal singers that included the titanic sopranos Antonietta Stella and Maria Callas. Named for a grandmother, Mattie Wilda Sykes, Mattiwilda Dobbs was born in Atlanta on July 11, 1925, the fifth of six daughters of John Wesley Dobbs and the former Irene Ophelia Thompson. Hers was a distinguished family: Ms. Dobbs’s father, a mail-train clerk, was long active in civic affairs, helping to register black voters as early as the 1930s. In the late 1940s he helped found the Atlanta Negro Voters League.
Mr. Dobbs insisted on a college education, along with seven years’ study of the piano, for each of his daughters, and he prevailed in every instance. As a girl, Mattiwilda also sang in her church choir but, retiring and bashful, did not envision a performing career. She began voice lessons in earnest only as an undergraduate at Spelman College in Atlanta. After earning her bachelor’s degree — she graduated first in her class with majors in Spanish and music — the young Ms. Dobbs moved North at her father’s insistence for advanced vocal training. “I would never have been a singer if it were not for my father,” she told Look magazine in 1969. “I was too shy.” In New York, Ms. Dobbs became a pupil of the German soprano Lotte Leonard; she also studied at Tanglewood. At the same time, as a hedge against the uncertainties of a career in music, she earned a master’s degree in Spanish from Columbia University Teachers College. Ms. Dobbs was a winner of the Marian Anderson Scholarship Fund in 1948, and received a scholarship from the John Hay Whitney Foundation not long afterward. On the strength of her awards, she moved to Paris, where she studied with the art-song specialist Pierre Bernac. In 1951, she came to wide international attention by winning a first prize in the Geneva International Music Competition. Over the years, Ms. Dobbs also sang at the Glyndebourne Festival in England and with the Royal Swedish Opera, the Hamburg State Opera and the Israel Philharmonic. In 1959, she was one of four Americans — the others were Gary Cooper, Edward G. Robinson and the producer Harold Hecht — sent by President
Dwight D. Eisenhower to establish a cultural exchange program with the Soviet Union. Ms. Dobbs’s first husband, Luis Rodriguez Garcia de la Piedra, a Spanish journalist whom she married in 1953, died the next year. (Only days after his death, she honored a commitment to sing at Covent Garden before the new monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.) In 1957 Ms. Dobbs married Bengt Janzon, a Swedish journalist, and she was known afterward in private life as Mattiwilda Dobbs Janzon. Mr. Janzon died in 1997. Ms. Dobbs’s survivors include a sister, June Dobbs Butts. Ms. Dobbs’s recordings include Mozart’s “The Abduction From the Seraglio,” Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers” and Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffmann.” After retiring from the concert stage, Ms. Dobbs taught voice at the University of Texas, Spelman College and, for many years, Howard University in Washington. Throughout her career, Ms. Dobbs refused to sing in segregated concert halls. She did not perform in her hometown, Atlanta, for instance, until 1962, when she sang before an integrated audience at the Municipal Auditorium there. In January 1974 she performed at another epochal Atlanta event, singing the spiritual “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” at the inauguration of the city’s first black mayor, Maynard Jackson. The choice of Ms. Dobbs to perform at Mr. Jackson’s inauguration seemed almost foreordained, and not merely because of their shared background as racial pioneers. Mr. Jackson, the great-great-grandson of a slave, was also Ms. Dobbs’s nephew. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/ arts/music/mattiwilda-dobbs-blacksoprano-and-principal-at-met-diesat-90.html
89 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Community/Public Interest-Obituary
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing Dead at 80 By Angela Bronner Helm
R
enowned black psychiatrist Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, author of the seminal 1991 work, The Isis (Yssis) Papers: The Keys To The Colors (Third World Press) has died. She was 80 years old. “Media Assassin” Harry Allen reported via Twitter that Dr. Welsing died at 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning (January 3rd) from a stroke she suffered earlier in the week. Dr. Welsing was born on March 18, 1935, in Chicago. Both her father and grandfather were medical doctors, and her mother was a teacher. She received her bachelor’s degree from Antioch College, and her M.D. from the Howard University College of Medicine. In 1974, Dr. Welsing became famous for her paper, the “Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation” which she published while an assistant professor of pediatrics at Howard’s medical school. According to Welsing, the work caused such a stir that her tenure at the university was not renewed in 1975. Dr. Welsing then spent more than 20 years as a staff physician for the Department of Human Services in Washington, D.C., and was a specialist in both child and general psychiatry, gaining particular acclaim for her work with young people. Additionally, she was a celebrated scholar who studied the origins
of white supremacy from a psychological and biological perspective, and was a proponent of the “Melanin Theory,” which espouses black superiority due to a higher concentration of melanin in people of African descent. As a psychiatrist, Welsing used Freudian symbolism to explain white supremacy, including the interpretation of guns, money, the cross and gold. She has faced some Dr. Frances Cress Welsing receives the controversy regarding her Fannie Lou Hamer Community Award during stance on homosexuality, which 10th Annual National Black L.U.V. Festival in she said was imposed on black Washington D.C., Sept. 21, 2008. men by whites who wanted to Elvert Xavier Barnes Photography reduce the African population. Dr. Welsing is perhaps best known for her 1991 book, The Isis Papers, which reportedly came about after 20 years of research and analysis from her private practice. It is considered required reading for those interested in the psychological origins and manifestations of white supremacy. Many prominent Afro-centrists including Chuck D, Roland Martin and others took to social media on Saturday morning to express their grief under the hashtag #FrancesCressWelsing. www.theroot.com/articles/ news/2016/01/dr_frances_cress_ welsing_dead_at_80.htm
90 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Community/Public Interest-Obituary was a mediator in many of the familiar racial hot spots in succeeding years. A notable episode in Sutton's time in Arkansas occurred in 1964. His effort finally broke the color line at the State Capitol cafeteria. It had been turned into a private club to avoid service to blacks. Turned away in 1964, he and the NAACP sued. Violent reaction broke out in subsequent student efforts to use the cafeteria. Finally, in April 1965 a federal judge ruled that barring Sutton was unconstitutional. "On April 29, Secretary of State Kelly Bryant announced that the cafeteria would reopen to the public the following morning at 7:00 a.m. The next day, Sutton returned alone to the cafeteria where he had been refused service ten months earlier. He joined the line, collected his food, and ate lunch without incident." Here's a longer account of that episode from an Arkansas Times article by UALR's John Kirk. Kirk, in another account of the episode, provided this detail on the beginning of the fight for desegregation: "On Wednesday, July 15, 1964, Ozell Sutton went by Secretary of State Kelly Bryant's office at the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock to col- lect copies of maps and current voter registration rolls for his work on the Arkansas Voter Project (AVP). He finished around lunchtime and headed down to the
Ozell Sutton, Arkansas Native Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 90 By Max Brantley
O
zell Sutton, one of the Arkansas-born drum majors for civil rights, died Saturday in Atlanta at 90, the AP reported. He held a Congressional Gold Medal as one of the first AfricanAmericans to serve in the Marine Corps. He was a retired community relations director for the Justice Department in Atlanta. His Arkansas past is wellremembered by the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Notably, the Gould native was the first black reporter to work for a white-owned newspaper in the state when he was hired by the Arkansas Democrat in 1950, after he graduated from Philander Smith College. "It was at the Democrat that he began to focus his energies on achieving racial justice. He also quarreled with his editors over how to address African Americans in the newspaper’s articles. Sutton wanted black men and women to be referred as “Mr.” and “Mrs.”— just as whites were. Eventually, Sutton’s editors relented." He was on hand at Central High in 1957 and marched with Martin Luther King Jr. From 1961 to 1966 he was assistant director of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations. He later served as an assistant to Republican Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, leaving Arkansas to work for the Justice Department in the early 1970s. He
basement cafeteria to get some food. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which required the desegregation of public facilities and accommodations, had become law just two weeks earlier on July 2. Sutton entered the food line, picked up a tray and silverware, and was perusing the salads when cafeteria manager S. Edris Tyer, who had operated the business on a lease from the state since 1947 (first with her late husband and for the past seven years on her own), approached Sutton and told him, "We don't serve Negras here!" Sutton recalled that he quipped, "That's all right lady, I don't eat them either, so you don't need to serve me any Negras.
You need to serve me some roast beef!"" That would take nine months to be served. A biography of Sutton at the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame writes that he served as a "decoy" to distract the mob when nine black students attempted to desegregate Central High School in 1957, their entry finally achieved only with federal court and troop assistance. Ebony magazine regularly listed him among the 100 most influential African-Americans. www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/ archives/2015/12/21/ozell-sutton-acivil-rights-leader-dies-at-90
91 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
African Stock Exchanges • Bolsa de Valores of Cape Verde - www.bvc.cv (in Portuguese) • Bond Exchange of South Africa - www.bondexchange. co.za • Botswana Stock Exchange www.bse.co.bw • Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres - UEMOA (Abidjan, Ivory Coast) - www.brvm.org • Casablanca Stock Exchange (Morocco) - www.casablancabourse.com/bourseweb/index. aspx • Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (Tanzania) - www. dse.co.tz • Douala Stock Exchange (Cameroon) - www.douala-stockexchange.com/index_us.php • The Egyptian Exchange - www.
• • •
•
•
• • •
egx.com.eg/English/homepage. aspx Ethiopia Commodity Exchange - www.ecx.com.et Ghana Stock Exchange - www. gse.com.gh Johannesburg Stock Exchange (South Africa) - www. jse.co.za/Home.aspx Khartoum Stock Exchange (Sudan, in Arabic) - www.kse. com.sd Libyan Stock Market - www. lsm.ly/_layouts/membership/ login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fEnglis h%2fPages%2fdefault.aspx Lusaka Stock Exchange (Zambia) - www.luse.co.zm Nairobi Stock Exchange (Kenya) - www.luse.co.zm Malawi Stock Exchange - www. mse.co.mw
• Mozambique Stock Exchange (in Portuguese) - www. bolsadevalores.co.mz • Namibian Stock Exchange www.nsx.com.na • Nigerian Stock Exchange www.nse.com.ng/Pages/default. aspx • Stock Exchange of Mauritius www.stockexchangeofmauritius. com • Swaziland Stock Exchange www.ssx.org.sz • Tunisia Stock Exchange - www. bvmt.com.tn • Uganda Securities Exchange www.use.or.ug Read the lastest issue of The Exchange Magazine www.nse.co.ke/media-center/ecommunique/exchange-magazine/ category/50-free-version.html
95 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
International
Ushahidi.com, Changing the Way Information Flows www.ushahidi.com
U
shahidi, which translates to “testimony” in Swahili, was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-
election violence in 2008. The initial outburst of chaos ushered in a turbulent period in Kenyan history, prompting Kenyan activist Ory Okolloh to send out a plea on her blog Kenyan Pundit: “Any techies out there willing to do a mashup of where the violence and destruction is occurring using Google Maps?” Okolloh’s simple query on January 3, 2008 inspired a group of bloggers to collaborate over the weekend to turn her dream into a reality. On January 9, Ushahidi was born, enabling Kenyans, and people around the world, to report and map incidents of violence via SMS or the web. Since then, thousands have used the crowdsourcing tools to raise their voice. We’re
a technology leader in Africa, headquartered in Nairobi, with a global team.
Leadership Ushahidi was made possible by a group of Kenyan activists and tech experts who wouldn’t stand by idly as a crisis engulfed their country. Ory Okolloh was born and raised in an impoverished, rural area of Kenya. According to her, “For most Africans today, where you live, or where you were born, and the circumstances under which you were born, determine the rest of your life. I would like to see that change, and the change starts with us… as Africans, we need to take responsibility for our continent!” Okolloh studied in the United States at the University of Pittsburgh for her undergraduate degree and then Harvard Law School for her JD. Following her law school graduation in 2005, she returned to Africa and established herself as a prominent blogger on Kenyan politics.
The Ushahidi Ecosystem
We design new products and initiatives with a global perspective.
Our aim is to serve people with limited access in hard-to-reach places. In addition to our other products, we are proud to be a key catalyst of an innovation ecosystem that are leaders in East Africa and around the world. We strive to create technology that solves global problems. The Ushahidi site provides users with deployment toolkits with comprehensive instructions on how to utilize the platform. One of the major challenges of crowd-sourced information is data authenticity. Ushahidi has developed a verification guide to coach users on authenticating reports. Additionally, Ushahidi has launched a new platform, Swift River, which can quickly analyze and verify large amounts of crowd-sourced data. Swift River is intended to make it even easier for NGOs and humanitarian organizations to respond in emergency situations. Ushahidi also hosts Crowd Map, a version of the Ushahidi platform that doesn’t require downloading and can be deployed within minutes to monitor elections or map a crisis. Teams make critical, timesensitive decisions using the data they collect in Ushahidi deployments every day. If they discover a report that someone was injured, they typically have to verify it and quickly pass that urgent information to responders on the ground. We’re making that process faster and more effective soon with a new toolset called “Responder.” It includes the controls to create
96 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
custom roles and permissions for your team members, to import CSV data, and to make your deployment completely private.
Relationships Ushahidi has attracted partnerships and funding from diverse and powerful organizations such as Google, Mozilla Foundation, Knight Foundation, Digital Democracy and the United States Institute for Peace. Although Ushahidi began as an adhoc group of bloggers reacting to a local crisis, it has grown into a fullfledged non-profit tech organization helping people across the globe
Initiatives We partner with leading foundations and organizations to increase access to information, empower citizens, and protect marginalized communities.
Making All Voices Count Ushahidi is a partner in this $55M fund that is working towards a world in which open, effective and participatory governance is the norm and not the exception. (www.
makingallvoicescount.com)
100 Resilient Cities Ushahidi supports and trains community based organizations to engage with local government using open-source tools. This work is in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities. (www.cityresilience.net)
Building Tools The Ushahidi team works to build technology to solve global problems. Some of the existing and on the way tools are: • Roll Call - a team check-in app that helps reach your people on any device, confirm they are OK, and get in touch. • BRCK - a rugged, cloud managed, full-featured modem/
router with built in fail-overs and programmable GPIO expansion. If there’s a way for you to connect, BRCK (www.brck.com) will help you get up and stay up no matter where you are. • SMSsync - SMS to HTTP sync utility (smssync.ushahidi.com) that turns any Android phone into a local SMS gateway by sending incoming messages (SMS) to a configured URL (web service). • CrisisNET - find, format and expose crisis data in a simple, intuitive structure that’s accessible anywhere. Now developers, journalists and analysts can skip the days of tedious data processing and get to work in minutes with only a few lines of code (www.crisis. net).
Participation Plans Ushahidi offers both free and pay participation plans (www.ushahidi. com/plans). https://www.ushahidi.com/ https://tavaana.org/en/content/ ushahidi-crisis-mapping-kenyamapping-globe
97 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
International
US Announced $88m in Food Aid to Ethiopia Agency Report
T
he United States government has announced $88 million to help feed hungry people in drought-stricken areas of Ethiopia, bringing the total amount of humanitarian aid to the country in 2015 to more than $435 million. The Ethiopian government is appealing for $1.4 billion from the international community to help feed more than 10 million people. “Ethiopia currently has one of the largest food insecure populations in the world, which has increased
dramatically since August 2015, as it is experiencing one of the worst droughts in decades,” USAID said in a statement. The aid will provide more than 116,000 metric tons of relief food aid to address the needs of 2.6 million people in 74 districts, said the statement. “This is one of the more severe droughts on record,” Dianna Darsney de Salcedo, a USAID official in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, told the Associated Press on Friday. “We are very concerned because of the number of failed rainy seasons successively on top of each other. The situation has not yet reached the level of
famine but the needs assessment so far shows severe conditions.” In addition to those needing food aid, Ethiopia has 7.9 million chronically food insecure people who are covered by the government’s Safety Net program, which is supported by the USAID and the donor community. The East African country is currently facing a humanitarian crisis caused by below normal rainfalls in many parts of the country. The El Nino weather phenomenon has aggravated the situation and has cause low agricultural productivity and the deaths of domestic animals. Ethiopia is experiencing its worst drought in 50 years, Save the Children said on December 9. www.leadership.ng/news/484866/usannounces-88m-food-aid-ethiopia?mkt_to k=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoks6vBc%2B%2Fh mjTEU5z16u0oW6G3lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPU fGjI4DTMtmMq%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7bN Kc1r2NkQXBfn
T
he African Union Commission (AUC) through the Directorate of Conference Management and Publications (DCMP) made a presentation to the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC) on the occasion of launching the DCMP newly devised e-conferencing system, which will greatly facilitate the work of the African Union (AU) by providing easy access to documents and reducing paper consumption. This user -friendly system which will be constantly enriched and updated, includes to-date, the following documents in the AU working languages: • • • •
All working documents of the last 17 Summits (from 2008 to-date) All AU Assembly Decisions/Resolutions and Declarations since Durban 2002 to-date (729 Decisions/Resolutions) All AU Executive Council Decisions/Resolutions since Durban 2002 to-date (903 Decisions/Resolutions) All OAU Assembly of Heads of State and Government Resolutions/Decisions from 1963 to 2002 (469 Resolutions/ Decisions) • All Council of Ministers Resolutions from 1963 to 2002 (2021 Resolutions)
This system can be accessed internally and externally through the following links: Internally: http:// conferenceweb; Externally: http://webmail.africa-union.org See more at: http://au.int/en/pressreleases/19563/african-union-commission-launches-e-conferencingsystem#sthash.Mo9MKtXq.dpuf.
International
2016 African Diaspora Investment Symposium January 29-30, 2016 Biltmore Hotel and Suites, Santa Clara, California www.africandiasporanetwork.org
Join us for the 2016 African Diaspora Investment Symposium on the West Coast, USA. For the first time in Silicon Valley, a global center of innovation, we are bringing together entrepreneurs and leaders from Africa and the Diaspora. Organized by the African Diaspora Network and supported by IdEA, this groundbreaking two-day event will serve as a platform where discussions, panels and workshops catalyze ideas into action on the continent and beyond. Our panelists and participants will showcase new investment channels to support African entrepreneurs, and to promote Africa’s story of dynamic growth. Be a part of this powerful movement to build Africa as a global community and join us from January 29-30 at the Biltmore Hotel and Suites in Santa Clara, California.
2016 African Diaspora Investment Webinar The symposium is in late January, but we're starting the conversation now. Join us for an online discussion on the challenges and opportunities for the African diaspora and others to invest in businesses and entrepreneurs on the continent. December 16, 2015 12 pm EST
99 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Education Mission to
South Africa, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire (optional) Explore Growing Education Markets in Up to Three African Countries! Join the U.S. Commercial Service, U.S. Department of Commerce, on an official trade mission to South Africa, and Ghana, with an optional stop in Côte d’Ivoire - March 7-10, 2016. Meet Students, Potential Partners, and Attend Meetings Designed to Help you Penetrate the Markets The mission will include student fairs organized by Education USA, embassy briefings, site visits, and networking events in our target cities of Johannesburg, Accra, and Abidjan. Who Should Participate? Accredited U.S. higher education institutions including: undergraduate and graduate programs, community colleges, summer programs, etc. Why These Countries? Africa as a whole is one of the “youngest continents,” with ‘outwardly mobile’ students comprising 25% of all students on the African continent- the highest rate in the world- and globally. The United States already represents the single largest target destination for students seeking international educational experiences. The continent has a growing middle class, and presently spends up to $900 million on education annually. In addition, of all African students presently in the United States, Ghana and South Africa rank in the top five countries amongst all African countries of origin. Trade Mission Goals The goals of the United States Education Mission to Africa are: 1) to help participants gain market exposure and to introduce them to the vibrant African market in the countries of South Africa, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire 2) to help participants assess current and future business prospects by establishing valuable contacts with prospective students and educational institutions/partners; and 3) to help participants develop market knowledge and relationships leading to student recruitment and potential partnerships.
Apply Now, Space is Limited Date: March 7-11, 2016
Stops
Mon./Tues. - Johannesburg, SA Wed./Thurs. – Accra, Ghana Fri (optional). - Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
Deadline to Apply January 15, 2016
Cost*
Ȉ ̈́ʹ800 per non-profit institution Ȉ ̈́͵͵ͲͲ per for-profit institution Ȉ ̈́00 for each additional representative Optional Côte d’Ivoire Stop Ȉ ̈́ͳͺͲͲ per non-profit institution Ȉ ̈́ͳͻͲͲ per for-profit institution *Expenses for travel, lodging, most meals, and incidentals will be the responsibility of each mission participant
For More Information: Jennifer Woods Senior International Trade Specialist U.S. Commercial Service Portland 503-326-5290 jennifer.woods@trade.gov Debra Rogers Senior International Trade Specialist Commercial Service Chicago 312-353-6988; debra.rogers@trade.gov
Download the Zambia-USA Chamber of Commerce App from the
Apple App Store or
Google Play Store Search: "Zambia USA Chamber"
Find links to the chamber website and facebook page, and embassies; access business resources; receive breaking news; view relevant video presentations; communicate via Twitter, smartphone and e-mail.
www.zambiausachamber.org
101 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
International
Technology in Silicon Valley Trade Mission for African Leaders The African Network
T
he African Network (TAN) is partnering with PocketPresents to bring you "Technology in Silicon Valley" (www. TechinSV.com), a 7-day event visiting top technology companies in Silicon Valley. The event will be held May 7th - 14th, 2016 in the United States, and is limited to 20 people. An information session will be held in Lagos, Nigeria in February 2016. The date will be communicated. We recommend participating in this trip to technical leads (CTOs, VPs/directors of engineering) at companies that are looking at technical scaling such as telcos, banks, insurance firms, e-commerce players and other scaling and high-availability environments. The event is open to companies on the entire African continent as many are battling with these scaling issues. Visit the website (www.TechinSV.com) to indicate interest…it is limited to 20 participants.
THE THEME: "Building for Scalability and High Availability" User adoption of digital services across Africa is pushing companies to reimagine their systems' architecture to support the scale and high availability users demand of electronic services. This trip will introduce participants to the solutions tech leaders have deployed to address this.
THE EVENT: "Technology in Silicon Valley" The trade mission will create an opportunity for a twoway conversation with engineering teams of leading technology companies, open opportunities to develop direct relationships with Silicon Valley practitioners, and transfer tangible technology know-how to technical personnel interested in efficiently operating at scale.
OBJECTIVES: • Transfer technical knowledge from Silicon Valley to Africa • Experience and understand developments of new technologies • Create networking channels amongst technology experts
• Better understand how technology platforms scale
EXPECTED BENEFITS: • Gain experience from technical experts in Silicon Valley • Get insights to new advanced and upcoming technology • Leverage contacts developed during the visit for future relations • Graft acquired knowledge to improve environments you operate through geared-up innovation
AGENDA: The 7-day visit is focused on learning from leading technology teams but will also give a taste of what life is like in a growing a startup as well as an inhabitant of the San Francisco bay area. There is a trip planned to Napa, local dinners with active participants in the venture capital community and mingling with builders of tomorrow and between the 9th013th visits to two companies a day. We hope you join us. Some targeted companies to visit are Google, HP, Facebook, Uber, Twitter, Paypal, Stripe, eBay, 4info, Snapchat, Dropbox, etc. Please feel free to contact or email us using the information below. The African Network (TAN) Inc. www.theafricannetwork.org Email: piwuh@theafricannetwork.org Phone: +234-803-8137310
102 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
International
Returning to Africa?
African Repatriation is an invaluable online resource for any African national who is thinking about returning to Africa. Our industry articles and specialist editorials provide the latest sector information. Why not find out for yourself and become a part of our growing community today? www.africanrepatriation. com
Career Opportunities in Africa Search and apply online for the latest vacancies in Africa with African Talent. We provide candidates and employers with the tools and resources needed in today’s competitive job market. For employers, we offer numerous options to feature your jobs in Africa and for candidates, reviewing the most recent job vacancies in Africa is a fast, easy process. Uploading your CV is simple and takes just a few moments. www.africantalent.com
103 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
konya
gi.co.t
z
International
One Africa:
J
Tell the US Government that North Africa is Africa Too!
oin with and support the United Africa Organization’s campaign to petition the U.S. Department of State to include the whole African continent under its Bureau of African Affairs.
Why? The State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, led by Assistant Secretary Johnnie Carson, currently excludes Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Western Sahara from its agenda. Instead, the aforementioned countries are grouped with the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, together with Iran, Iraq, Israel and others. This artificial distinction between North Africa and the rest of Africa
negatively impacts US foreign policy relations throughout the entire continent of Africa. We unequivocally reject the argument that North African countries are outside the scope of African affairs. North Africa is geographically and historically part of the African continent, and all fifty-three (53) independent African states, including North African countries, are represented in the African Union (AU). It would be far more productive for the State Department to engage with the entire continent of Africa, including North Africa, under its Bureau of African Affairs. We are one Africa, from the Cape to Cairo, indivisible and bound together! Therefore, no square inch of African
land should be excluded from African affairs.
Sign The Petition!!! Go to www.change.org/petitions/ one-africa-tell-us-state-departmentthat-north-africa-is-part-of-africa and sign the online petition to support this important proposition. Next tell everyone you know to sign.
www.uniteafricans.org
Thursday Blues at Uncle Darrow‛s High Noon-2pm Every Thursday
Come by for lunch and relax to blues & jazz from our house band! 2560 S. Lincoln Blvd. Marina del Rey North East corner of Washington & Lincoln
“LA Times Magazine favorite cajun food”
310-306-4862
www.uncledarrows.com 106 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
International
GHANA—2016 CULTURAL HOME GOING & BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY TOUR Come join me on a magnificent journey through the amazing lands of West Africa. Experience Ghana in all of its splendor - from the mélange of its traditional and modern history, to the diversity of its culture and languages, to the warmth and hospitality of the Ghanaian people.
$3,500* USD June 18—30, 2016 Dominique DePirma
13 Days and 9 Nights with Airfare *Double Occ.
x x x
x x x
CULTURAL EXPERIENCE AWAITS YOU Experience Accra’s colonial and contemporary architecture See the colorful harbor below the Cape Coast Castle Follow the path that the slaves took from the dungeons to the “door of no return” Participate in a African Naming Ceremony Learn about the mighty Ashanti Kingdom Shop for authentic arts and crafts
Host –Front Page 102.3 KJLH African Focus Cultural Ambassador
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES xSolar Energy xWaste management xAgriculture and farming xOil and gas xICT xFood production xTransport services xReal estate xTourism xParticipate in 2 Business
Opportunity Workshops Cape Coast Slave Castle
Relax at an ocean front resort
ORGANIZED BY
Phone: 310.676.7300
Visit www.africanfocus.org Email: afstours@africanfocus.org
Shopping Gallery
@EleVenbyVenus elevenbyvenus.com
Artwear Handpainted Handbags, Skirts, Tees, Accessories, Calendars, Wall Hangings & More! http://gbabysworld.blogspot.com Gbabyartwear@hotmail.com or Gbabyart345@gmail.com Find Gbaby Products at the “Collective� http://www.atthecollective.com 280 Elizabeth Street, Atlanta, GA www.carolsdaughter.com
.com
Find us at: https://nubianskin.com, www.nubianskin.com/us and 15 Nordstrom stores in the USA
Empowering Women. Embracing our Colour.
The Economic Turn Around in the USA is in Our Hands •Buy Products Made or Assembled in the USA •Hire One New Employee •Eat an Extra Meal Out Each Week •Start/Grow a Business to Generate Wealth & Jobs
Buy Black Save Black Invest Black 113 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Collection Bed, Bath & Beyond
http://bsmith.com/shop
http://marvin-sin.squarespace.com
This magnificent handcrafted concert grand is a "Best of" in terms of sound, new technology, beauty, and construction. Massively well-built to withstand the rigors of intense concert performances without compromise, the SHADD Concert Grand is a coveted treasure for pianists and collectors. With a rich voluminous sound that performs true to all genres of music, this phenomenal instrument has a rare diversified ability to play from the softest whisper with pure clear sound to a major roar with a bass section exuding an abundance of power and resounding singing sensations.
www.shaddpianos.com
Baron's Painting & Decorating Service Baron Williams
30 Years of Experience in the Greater Los Angeles Area Specializing in Exterior and Interior Painting, Tiling, Linoleum Flooring,
Cultural Interiors West &
Cordially Invited Cultural Interiors West 5573 West Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90019
& Wall Paper
"I will paint any one story building or house for $2,500 satisfaction guaranteed."
1-323-490-3774
Experience our exciting array of products from Cards to Cupcakes, African Masks, Asian Teacups, Healthy Herbal Teas, Gourd Purses, Candles, to Furniture Hope to see you soon!!! In the meantime visit us on Facebook www.facebook.com/pages/CulturalInteriors-West/140688362658236
116 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
New Location Leimert Park Village 3347 W. 43rd Street Los Angeles, CA 90008 1-323-299-6383 www.zambezibazaar.com shop@ zambezibazaar.com
117 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
ZIMBABWE GALLERY 1-484-459-6625 zimbabwegallery@yahoo.com www.shonasculpture.com @ZimbabweGallery www.facebook.com/Zimbabwe Gallery
PHIPPS PLAZA 3500 Peachtree Road, Atlanta, GA 30326
GREENBRIAR MALL 2841 Greenbriar Pkwy SW, Atlanta, GA 30331
Shop for all of the NoMu products at: https://shop.nomu.co.za and www.amazon.com
Locations: Downtown Culver City: 9537 Culver Blvd. 310-202-5453 City of Compton: 2600 E. Alondra Blvd. 310-638-7871 www.honeyskettle.com Open Sunday-Thursday 11am-10pm Friday-Saturday 11am-11pm
118 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Bernahu Asfaw & Getahun Asfaw
1041 S. Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 323-938-8827 or 323-938-8806 • Fax: 323-932-6047 messob@gmail.com • www.messob.com
Open 7 days a week • 11am - 11pm
Krispy Kruchy Chicken is in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, Los Angeles. Krispy Krunchy Chicken is a cajun-style chicken (bone-in and tenders), served fresh, never frozen and fried in zero trans fat oil. Their menu also includes signature dishes of Traditional Wings; Krispy Wings; Cajun Sweet & Sour Wings; Cajun Tenders; Red Beans and Rice; Jambalaya; Boudin Bites (Cajun rice balls); Krispy Shrimp and Honey Butter Biscuits. For additional information, please call Krispy Kruchy at 1-323-293-3332 or visit www. krispykrunchy.com. 121 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Parker House Sausage (www.parkerhousesausage.
com) was started by Chicago entrepreneur, Judge H. Parker who came to Chicago from Montgomery County, Tennessee with little more than the conviction that there was a potential market for homemade sausage products prepared according to his mother’s recipes. By 1919 Judge Parker began selling his unique blend of herbs and spices mixed with flavorful, savory sausage from a horse drawn cart on a retail basis. Recognized as one of the oldest family owned businesses in the U.S. In 2014 Parker House expanded its product line to include chicken products including breakfast sausage, hot links, and smoked sausage.
SHOP ONLINE! //shop.parkerhousesausage.com
We invite you to browse through our store and shop with confidence. Need a dinner idea. Go to the Recipe Page on our website. Thanks for visiting!
Ma's Best is a bakery specializing in the production of home-style yeast rolls and baked products. www.facebook.com/masbestrolls/#!/masbestrolls/?tab=page_info#!/masbestrolls/info
Try all 3 flavors!
In your local grocery store or shop online for syrups, recipes, and books. Learn about our special projects and join the recipe contest.
MICHELE FOODS, INC. 1-708-331-7316 www.michelefoods.com
128 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Eso Won Books African American Books 4327 Degnan Boulevard Leimert Park, Los Angeles
Give the Gift of Books and Music Come see our unsurpassed collection of books, music, videos, children’s books, and games!
1-323-294-0324
www.esowonbookstore.com //esowon.booksense.com for Calendar of Events
129 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Master Planner January 27th LAFC & PCL Project Information Session Overview of the anticipated contract opportunities associated with the LAFC Soccer Stadium project will be held at PCL, 500 N. Brand Blvd., #1599, Glendale, CA. .The Corporate Council on Africa website at www.summit.africacncl.org or #AfricaBizSummit.
February
26th-27th
Black Fashion Week USA Events will be held at the South Shore Cultural Center, Chicago, IL. For detailed information visit www.blackfashionweekusa.com
9th How to do Business with METRO Workshop This two-hour orientation and business workshop is held on the second Tuesday of each month and provides firms with information on Metro's certification program, vendor registration, contract lookahead schedules and other useful information. Metro's procurement staff also conducts one-on-one interviews with firms during the workshop. Please note that the workshop starts promptly at 9:30am. For further questions, please contact Marisela Villar at VillarM@metro.net or via phone at 213.922.2235.
10th-11th Legislative Reception & Policy Luncheon Hosted by the California Black Chamber of Commerce will take place at the Sheraton Grand, Sacramento, CA. 4:30 to 6pm.
16th-18th 19th Annual Wall Street Project Economic Summit Hosted by Rainbow Push Coalition and Citizen Education Fund in New York City. Visit www.rainbowpushwallstreetproject.org.
March
Chamber of Commerce will take place at the Holiday Inn Capital Plaza, Sacramento, CA. For detailed information visit www.calbcc.org.
May 7th-14th Technoloty in Silicon Valley The African Network and PocketPresents a trade mission for visiting African leaders that will create an opportunity for a two-way conversation with engineering teams of leading technology companies, open opportunities to develop direct relationships with Silicon Valley practitioners, and transfer tangible technology know-how to technical personnel interested in efficiently operating at scale. Please feel free to contact or email us at: The Af-
19th BBA Salute to Black Women Taking place at the LA Hotel Downtown, the business conference, vendor faire and awards luncheon will be presented using the theme "Working to Form a More Perfect Union." For particiation information visit www.bbala.org
April 22nd-23rd African-American Leadership Hosted by the California Black
rican Network (TAN) Inc., www. theafricannetwork.org, Email: piwuh@theafricannetwork.org.
June 2016 DATE TBA BBA Annual Awards Dinner in Honor of Black Music Month Taking place at the LA Hotel Downtown, the awards dinner will highlight the achievements of African American entrepreneurs and the government agencies and corporate entities that provide positive supports for African American businesses. For particiation information visit www.bbala.org.ď ƒ
131 ď‚ą January 2016 ď‚ą Black Business News ď‚ą www.blackbbusinessnews.net ď‚ą 1-323-291-7819
Books to Consider
Books to Consider... Cooked: My Journey from the Streets to the Stove by Chef Jeff Henderson
B
y twenty-one, Jeff Henderson was making up to $35,000 a week cooking and selling crack cocaine. By twenty-four, he had been sentenced to nineteen and a half years in prison on federal drug trafficking charges. It was an all-too-familiar story for a young man raised on the streets of South Central LA. But what happened next wasn't. Once inside prison, Jeff Henderson worked his way up from dishwasher to chief prison cook, and when he was released in 1996, he had found his passion and his dream—he would become a professional chef. Barely five years out of federal prison, he was on his way to becoming an executive chef, as well as being a sought-after public speaker on human potential and a dedicated mentor to at-risk youth. A window into the streets and the fast-paced kitchens of world-renowned restaurants, Cooked is a very human story with a powerful message of commitment, redemption, and change www.amazon.com/Cooked-My-Journey-StreetsStove/dp/0061153915
If You Can See It, You Can Be It: 12 Street-Smart Recipes for Success by Chef Jeff Henderson Chef Jeff Henderson, the New York Times best-selling author of Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, From Cocaine to Foie Gras, presents two decades of life lessons that he gained on his redemptive journey from 132 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
drug dealer to TV celebrity chef to nationally acclaimed speaker. He has devoted himself to mentoring and motivating at-risk and vulnerable Americans, and his remarkable achievements and inspiring presentations have made him a sought-after speaker for business and non-profit organizations, addressing tens of thousands of individuals each year at conventions, conferences, and seminars. Now, with the 12 inspiring and pragmatic “recipes” he offers in this book, you can discover your hidden business aptitudes, make life-changing decisions, and secure bulletproof personal and professional success. Whether you’re a “have-not” suffering from generational or situational poverty or a “lost-a-lot” knocked out by the economic recession, you’ll learn something from Chef Jeff’s unique perspectives on the virtues of selfknowledge, hard work, determination, and leverage in the real world. Reboot your dreams and gain a new foothold on the ladder to success!
W
hether you are just starting out and in your first job, or you are approaching retirement, or somewhere in between, you need to pay close attention to your personal finances. In A-Z of Personal Finance, Nimi Akinkugbe, with a professional career spanning over two decades in banking and private wealth management, provides you with important practical information and useful tips on matters concerning you and your money. Nimi regularly contributes articles that are featured in a host of prominent publications including Genevieve Magazine, The Punch Newspapers, Business Day, and Forbes Africa. She is a much sought after speaker and guest on television and radio programs. Through these fora she has been able to create greater public awareness and understanding of personal finance and wealth management issues. (Available via Kindle) www.amazon.com/A-Z-PERSONAL-FINANCE-NimiAkinkugbe-ebook/dp/B00V3ZUGZK
www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401940617/ ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687682&pf_ rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_ i=0061153915&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_ r=0YGS2YFFCMGVMQ55B583
A-Z of Personal Finance by Nimi Akinkugbe
The DNA of Achievers: 10 Traits of Highly Successful 133 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Professionals P f i by Mathew Knowles
M
athew Knowles’ book serves the purpose of establishing a blueprint for creating the traits necessary to allow one’s full potential to be reached – a DNA that is built into the fabric of every highly successful person, “The beginning of this DNA, the root of being an achiever is based on passion,” Knowles explains. As Knowles embarks on the DNA journey, he also dispels myths regarding entrepreneurship, explaining that an entrepreneur and a business owner are not necessarily the same thing, “An entrepreneur is really a headset-it’s a belief,” he explains. “So even as an employee I felt I
was an entrepreneur in my approach, more so than a salesperson.” Under the leadership of Knowles, his company Music World Entertainment (MWE) has grown into one of the world’s largest contenders, boasting record sales surpassing 300 million. The book is broken down into the aforementioned ten traits: 1.) Passion, 2.) Vision, 3.) Work Ethic, 4.) Team Building, 5.) Planning, 6.) Talk-To-Do Ratio, 7.) Risk-Taking, 8.) Learning From Failure, 9.) Giving Back, and 10.) Thinking Outside the Box. To cement what the reader has learned, there is a quiz included at the end of every chapter that tests your grasp of the material. www.amazon.com/The-DNA-Achievers-SuccessfulProfessionals-ebook/dp/B016N9Q2IU
134 January 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819
Resource Vault Media/Information Africa Interactive Multimedia Press/Content Agency in Africa www.africa-interactive.com Africa World Press Books www.africaworldpressbooks.com African Trade Magazine www.africantrademagazine.com African Vibes Magazine www.africanvibes.com The Africapitalist www.tonyelumelufoundation.org/ africapitalisminstitute/africapitalist-magazine The African World www.theafricanworld.tv Africast TV www.africast.tv Afritorial www.afritorial.com www.facebook.com/Afritorial AllAfrica http://allafrica.com Black Wall Street Times http://bwstimes.com Black Business News Group www.blackbusinessnews.net Black Children's Books and Authors http://blackchildrensbooksandauthors.tumblr.com BlackPast.org www.blackpost.org Black Press USA www.blackpressusa.com BridesNoir www.bridesnoir.com The Chocolate Voice www.thechocolatevoice.com CuisineNoir www.cuisinenoirmag.com DiasporaVoice www.blogtalkradio.com/diasporavoice Publish Africa http://wow.gm/publishafrica Rock Me Africa //rockmeafrica.com YouTube Educational Channels http://teacherswithapps.com/197-educational-youtube-channels-know World Library www.worldlibrary.org
Africa Leadership Forum http://africaleadership.org The African Union www.au.int/en Black Business Association www.bbala.org CauseCast www.causecast.com www.causecastfornonprofits.com Pan African Film Festival www.paff.org United African Organization http://uniteafricans.org Zambia-USA Chamber of Commerce www.zambiausachamber.org
Investment/Development Africa Reports www.africareports.com African Development Bank www.afdb.org African Export-Import Bank //afreximbank.com/afrexim/en AfrigadgetTV www.afrigadget.com Disrupt Africa http://disrupt-africa.com/ The Exchange Magazine www.nse.co.ke Silicon Harlem http://event.siliconharlem.net Ventures www.ventures-africa.com
U.S. Government
Commerce Department www.doc.gov International Trade Administration http://trade.gov Minority Business Development Agency www.mbda.gov Power Africa www.usaid.gov/powerafrica Small Business Administration www.sba.gov State Department www.dos.gov Trade Africa www.usaid.gov/tradeafrica White House www.whitehouse.gov
Organizations 136 February 2016 Black Business News www.blackbbusinessnews.net 1-323-291-7819