This year, I’ve begun a deep dive into unlearning and re-learning ecosystem building through the lens of what is desired by Black innovators versus corporate social responsibility initiatives such as “Diversity and Inclusion.” At the start of the year, HBCUvc created a new vision statement that reads: To build a global innovation economy where Black, […]
**I found this post sitting in my draft folder from 5 years ago. Decided to published all of my draft posts today without editing.*** I meet a lot of early staged entrepreneurs interested in building either a web or mobile application. However, when asked about their current customers, their response is that they want to […]
**I found this post sitting in my draft folder from 5 years ago. Decided to published all of my draft posts today without editing.*** If I would’ve wrote a blog post last week, (like I planned), I’ve would’ve entitled it “Having a Kick Arse Week”, (but I’m was too busy having a great week to […]
Impact investing and double/triple bottom line funds are the casted as the white hats in venture capital. However, impact investing as a sector has been vague, and provides no guidance or best practices on what needs to be done or measured to be considered impact. There’s also a weird implication, I’ve observed, where any Black […]
“What does success look like for HBCUvc?” This is a common question asked to us by funders and other potential stakeholders. In the past, I’ve answered the question with the standard variety of jargon — increase diversity in venture capital / technology, increase access to capital, close racial wealth gap. However, even if these things […]
Without a doubt, 2019 was an remarkable year. Professionally, I saw HBCUvc begin to become a real organization, instead of “Hadiyah’s project.” Here are some of the professional highlights: Accepted into Praxis and Echoing Green Fellowship HBCUvc increased it’s budget from $200k to $600k Doubled HBCUvc’s team count from 3 FT team members to 6 […]
“Do you have any tattoos?” she asked. “No. I thought it would be beautiful, you know, to get through life without any marks.” “You know you’re too loyal? Loyal to a fault.” “Loyal to myself? To my own body? What could be wrong with that?” “To a fault.”
The media (news, movies, music) I consume today is highly individualized and normally watched through a personal device such as my iPhone. All of which is suggested to me through the use of computer algorithms. This means that the internet available to me is pre-determined by a previous online choice and/or a choice of […]
Each year, I attempt to do a self-reflection blog post. Generally, the blog post is a recap of the previous year and an expression of personal and professional ambitions for the new year. This year, I have no real desire or motivation to write this post. I attribute this lack of motivation to my inherent […]
A couple of weeks ago, I was on a crowded BART train. There was a young black teenager sitting in a seat and had his foot on another seat listening to music through his headphones. An older white man, my assumption was this man was minimally 50 years or older, entered the train and sat […]
