The Black Ambition Prize Provides Access And Community To Entrepreneurs

Behind the back wall of The Smith restaurant in New York City, the 2024 Black Ambition Prize winners gathered for the New York Learning Labs Welcome Reception. Monday’s event kicked off the non-profit’s two-day experience powered by Louis Vuitton and Visa. This experience aims to accelerate and empower the 2024 prize winners. 

Founded by recording artist, producer, philanthropist, Pharrell Williams, Black Ambition aims to close the gap between wealth and opportunity. The non-profit invests in underrepresented founders to provide capital, mentorship, and corporate connections that help expand their businesses. Between their Black Ambition Prize and the Black Ambition HBCU Prize, which funds current students and alumni that attended a Historically Black College or University, the non-profit has awarded $131 million to 13 founders since its inception. Along with the money, prize winners join the entrepreneurial community of Black Ambition and have the opportunity to work with like-minded individuals.

“ To be honest, it feels like I’m in college all over again,” said Shawn Washington, aka “Stige the Gifted,” founder and CEO of Mecca Made Studios. “I am blessed to be around so many other successful Black and Brown founders that are on a mission.”

Mecca Made serves as a virtual gym for recording artists who want to focus on true artist development. They nurture talent through coaching, data insights, and content creation tools. As a recipient of The Black Ambition HBCU Prize, the non-profit awarded Shawn $25,000. This helped him release his first album, You Deserve Better, and sign on 20 new clients. 

Along with monetary investment, Shawn credits Black Ambition for introducing him to a network of like-minded individuals he can learn from, including Monica Williams, co-founder and CEO of RedDrop and Black Ambition’s 2024 Grand Prize winner. Her company produces period products and education for school aged girls. With $1,000,000 earnings and emergence into the Black Ambition network, Monica has hit three of the four pillars she set for the progression of her business. This includes expanding access to RedDrop’s services from just elementary and middle school aged girls to girls in high school and creating a line of products for young girls who play sports.

“ We’ve tried to raise money, I pitched a hundred VCs,” she said. “To build a physical product company really takes capital. Being the recipient of that prize really challenged me with how do I take this prize money and make it flip it, essentially? How do I take this and grow my business fivefold, tenfold.”

During the town hall portion of the evening, Black Ambition’s CEO, Felecia Hatcher, took the time to acknowledge the 2024 cohort’s efforts to intentionally grow their networks. Through Black Ambition, winners are put in contact with executives at places like Louis Vuitton and Visa and they’re tasked with leveraging that connection to achieve their entrepreneurship goals. Felecia said she takes pride in the fact that she doesn’t have to worry about her entrepreneurs when she sends them out for a call.

“Community starts with trust and when you have people who have accomplished really great things, sometimes the trust circle gets smaller and smaller and smaller because they may think that you don’t necessarily know or fully understand how to navigate that relationship or those connections,” she said. “You all have been very phenomenal stewards of the connections and of the relationships.”

Black Ambition shines light on a high value matter in business: access. Pharrell Williams saw a need to bring this access to underserved communities and he and Hatcher plan to continue to fund more founders for years to come. 

“ I truly feel like everything I’d done before was practice, trial and error,” Shawn said. “Now, I feel like I’m actually getting guidance and a roadmap to success and it only opened the door for me in terms of this. I’m in a room in New York City, doing an interview, and just building a platform right now. I think that’s all we can ever ask for is [to] just put us in a room.”