South Florida’s Black business leaders discuss challenges at economic summit
A group of South Florida Black business leaders on Friday discussed challenges that African-American entrepreneurs face in the region while hitting on ways to build generational wealth at the annual National Black Economic Conference.
Hosted virtually, the conference kicked off with an overview session featuring Danielle Jones, senior account manager at The Mosaic Group, a West Palm Beach-based marketing firm; Eric Knowles, president and CEO of the Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce; Shaheewa T. Jarrett, general counsel and vice president of Gelin Benefits Group; Joseph Sanches, member and board chair-elect at the Black Chamber of Commerce of Palm Beach County; and Ann Marie Sorrell, president and CEO of the Mosaic Group.
“The state of the Black business is in flux,” Knowles said, adding that while some Black businesses, like a janitorial services group, had done extremely well during the pandemic, most had not. Initial data from economist Robert Fairlie shows 40% of Black-owned firms closed in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak compared with 20% of all active U.S. businesses.
At the same time, thousands of Black Americans started new businesses in 2020, a year that saw more Black entrepreneurial growth than at any time in the last 25 years, according to a Kauffman Foundation annual report. Yet many were forced to do so out of necessity rather than economic opportunity — a fact the Miami Herald recently highlighted in a report on the state of Black entrepreneurship in South Florida.
On Friday, the panelists discussed how business owners could better tap technology, global markets and emerging opportunities like renewable energy and cannabis.
“Businesses must start going outside their comfort zone,” Sorrell said in an interview after the panel, especially in the case of a market like cannabis, which often carries a strong taboo in the Black community.
The panelists also discussed ways of building wealth. They said too many Black individuals overlook opportunities like life insurance as a form of investment that can build a generational foundation for supporting a family or even a community.
“When you pass, now your family has an insurance plan that you’ve invested in all these years,” Sorrell said.
The annual conference is produced by The Mosaic Group in partnership with the Urban League of Broward County.
This story was originally published August 27, 2021 at 2:07 PM.
