Equity and Entrepreneur Ecosystems

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Hello and welcome to our third annual Innovation Ecosystem Summit. Please, as a reminder, share your light bulb moments with us on social media using the hashtag esosummit2023 and seed the future. Also visit americaseedfund us to learn more about the programs and activities coming out of our office. All right, in this next panel, hear from federal leaders and private sector partners on how to build equity into the foundation of your local entrepreneur ecosystems to ensure all entrepreneurs can access the capital and resources to grow and scale their businesses. Please help me welcome to the stage Maddie Stokes, COO at upsurge Baltimore, who will be leading this discussion. Over to you, Maddie.

Thank you, Jamila. Super excited today to lead moderate the panel on equity and entrepreneur ecosystems. My name is Maddie Stokes. I'm the COO of upsurge Baltimore, a professional ecosystem building organization on a mission to build the first Equitech city in Baltimore. When we say Equitech, we envision a thriving tech city anchored by diverse leadership, equitable systems and practice, and a culture of belonging in tech. And so while we're laser focused on Baltimore City, rich in assets and culture, we know we stand on the shoulders of entrepreneurs and ecosystem builders who have been doing this work much longer than us at 2.5 years old of an organization. And we really think that shared lessons and solidarity networks across the country will help us build not just an Equitech city, but an Equitech country. So I'm really excited to talk in this panel and hear from federal leaders about how we do that. How do we build equity into the foundation of local entrepreneur ecosystems to ensure all entrepreneurs have access to capital and resources to grow and scale their businesses? Unfortunately, our private sector partner, Faye Horowit with four Forward Cities had a last minute conflict. So we'll miss her today and we'll really focus on the experience of our federal leaders. And first, I want to introduce Jackson Brasi. He's the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Native American affairs at the Small Business Administration SBA who's hosting today. In his role, he serves as a senior executive providing executive oversight, management, leadership and championship of Native American entrepreneurship. And before the SBA, he served as executive director for both the Native CDFI Network, a 501c3 advocacy group, and the Navajo Nation Washington office, the official intergovernmental affairs office for the largest tribe in the nation. Welcome Jackson. It's fantastic to meet you and to have you today. And then I'll just quickly introduce Joanne J. Hill as well, a native of Columbia, South Carolina who serves as Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of the Minority Business Development Agency at the Department of Congress sorry of Commerce and supports overall management, formulation and execution of policies and programs. That includes programmatic advice, guidance and direction to the senior leadership. And she engages with external facing stakeholders both domestically and internationally. Before this she was Chief of the Office of Business Development for the mbda and before that she came to the MBDA headquarters. She served as Deputy Regional Director of the MBDA Atlanta Regional Office. Super excited to have both of you today. I'm going to offer some discussion questions and we'll see where the conversation goes. For those who are on listening to this panel, please don't hesitate to throw your questions into the chat. If I can integrate them into the conversation, I certainly will. And if we have time at the end for more Q and A, we'll do that as well. But I know we have a short time frame, so I want to start by talking about office and both of your office and agency backgrounds and collaboration. So perhaps you could share briefly a little bit about what your what your office and your agency respectively do and how the SBA and the MBDA interact. Jackson, do you want to kick us off thing?

Thank you. That means thank you in the Navajo language of do y and that's a welcome in the Navajo language. Jackson Bryce and that's real a snippet of my formal and respectful introduction in the Navajo language. And I'm originally from the Navajo Nation and I'm really fortunate to work and head up our Office of Native American affairs at the Small Business Administration and the sba. We are proud to help businesses start building grow using a number of different tools. Obviously we're here to support ecosystems and investment and innovation. We also work with contractors and training and where our office, the Office of Native American affairs fits in is our mission is to ensure that every single Native American entrepreneur, small business out there has access to these great resources at the sba. Not only is aware of them, but also that we're able to meet them hopefully in person. And that's the charge we have from our administrator to meet our entrepreneurs where they are. And really one of the challenges here is there. The Native American community is really diverse. It is not singular. Not everybody's Navajo. Not everybody speaks the same language as I do. And not everybody is from Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, where Navajo people are. There are 570 plus tribes across the country. And in addition to that diversity of tribes, there are also diversity of people where they live, where they work. A lot of most Native people no longer live on reservations and some Native people don't have reservations to begin with. So there's a challenge and our goal is to make sure that every single one of these entrepreneurs has access to the resources that we have at the sba. So really happy to be here, proud to be here, and hopefully we're able to connect not only the entrepreneurs, but also some of our ecosystem partners, our investment partners to Native American entrepreneurs and Native American entrepreneurs. Thanks.

So much, Jackson. And such an important point on meeting entrepreneurs where they are and how much diversity there is even in these like brackets that the federal government has for socially disadvantaged groups. In terms of the diversity and the intersectionality that exists there, I'm sure there's a lot to be said as well, Joanne, in terms of your role at the MBDA and how you interact with the sba.

Absolutely. And in my just over two decades with the agency, we have been a long standing partner and collaborator with the sba. In fact, I was looking at some of the initiatives MBDA to the point that Jackson was making and we have 13American Indian, Alaska, Native, Native Hawaiian Business centers. That's one of the portfolios that I've had oversight of now. And we work very closely with the SBA on the ground, looking at how we complement and enhance the resources that we offer to our clients and our partners on the ground at mbda. For those of you that might not be as familiar with the agency, we've been in existence now for about 54 years and our sole mission is to help provide growth and global competitiveness for our clients through both public and private sector contracts, traditional as well as alternative sources of capital, and helping them to go global. And since we're talking about an innovation ecosystem and how do we leverage those systems to help these companies grow and expand, I'll stretch out a little bit more on resources that are offered under the Commerce Department writ large, where MBDA is housed under the U.S. department of Commerce and some of the touch points of our equities within the Commerce umbrella, such as the US Patent and Trademark Office. When you talk about protecting your intellectual property and making certain that your work this does not get taken but and others profit off of it. But also our other partners under Commerce sister agencies including the Economic Development Administration, the International Trade Administration and more. Thank you.

So much to learn about here. I thought we'd start now that everyone has a bit of a background. We know that in entrepreneurial ecosystem there are such a diversity of entrepreneurs. You both kind of alluded to that, not just in terms of their identities, but also small businesses and scalable business serial entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs that aren't even entrepreneurs yet, but they'll be our future entrepreneurs. Right? And I thought it was interesting. At the Startup Champions Network Fall conference, we talked about the concept that finance is not neutral. And we talked about trauma informed financial education. And for those of us who are in the tech sector, this is a concept just that you really don't hear about at all. And it's really important for our team to learn about. Can each of you give one or two examples of successful strategies your partners, your grantees across the country have employed that you're really excited about in terms of really embedding equity into the work that they're doing to serve entrepreneurs?

All right, I'll jump in here really quick. The SBA were happy to to have just finished up and we're finishing up something called the Community Navigators Pilot. And this Community Navigators Pilot was funded as part of the one of the recovery Bills American Rescue Plan. And the idea behind the Community Navigators Pilot is we would partner with entrepreneur serving organizations across the country through a hub and spoke model. And one of these hubs was a Native Community development Financial Institutions, Native cdfi called OESA Corporation. And OESA is a Native CDFI intermediary. They relent and provide training and technical assistance to native CDFIs that work at a more, I guess, micro level directly with entrepreneurs. And so they, in addition to parting with a. We had 26 different spokes across the country, from Maine to Oklahoma to South Dakota to Alaska and Hawaii. And these 26 different spokes allowed us to dramatically increase the amount of entrepreneur serving organizations that the SBA partners with to the, to a point where we, it's really unprecedented. We never had more than really more than 10 partners at a time. And so we're, we're really proud of that partnership and proud of the way that each of these native CD5s that are our partners were able to connect and provide access to capital, for the most part, to entrepreneurs that really are underbanked. And a lot of them can't Even get the SBA's access to capital programs, which are designed for new and upcoming small businesses and kind of provide some background around that. FDIC did a survey, they did a survey of unbanked and underbanked people. And the n, unfortunately, Native American folks were the highest in unbanked population in 2019 at about 16%. So by us partnering with folks like OESA to connect with these native CDFIs across the country and get to places where a lot of times we can't reach and they are already in the community. I'm really proud of that partnership and I think that if you are an entrepreneur serving organization or someone who is in that area who wants to do a little more outreach to Native American communities, partnering with folks like OESA, these native CDFIs is a really good way to do that, a way that's established and a way that we know the SBA works really well. And so by doing this, we're also able to connect these native CDFIs with the 68 different district offices the SBA has across the country and then also our Small Business Development center network, which is a thousand plus. And so I'm hopeful that in the future we have, we're able to develop more partnerships like that, even though this one is coming to an end because the American Rescue plan, that aspect is over.

So thank you, I really appreciate that. Jackson, I'm hearing how important it is to leverage networks and to collaborate across networks, especially trusted networks. Joanne, what, what, what success story do you want us to to know about that that gets you excited?

Sure, a couple. One in particular notable is following on to Jackson's point about the American Rescue Plan and the reauthorization specifically of the State Small Business Credit Initiative. That's a new initiative that MBDA recently launched, the Capital Readiness Program partnership that we have with the US Department of Treasury, where we were infused with $125 million to help our clients with access to capital. Through that Initiative, we launched four 43 footprints across America with some very strategic partners, including chambers of commerce, trade associations, and some of our current business center partners. There's a listing of those you can find on our website. But that's one of the most exciting initiatives. It officially launched on September 1st of this year, so it's just been up and running now, if you will, for a few months. And one of the things that I think you should know, the attendees here today is one two of the pillars incubators and accelerators. We were looking for partners that could come to the table that would operate from working with those businesses that might be a startup looking for micro business loans, they might be looking for working capital, they might be looking for a line of credit, they might be looking for private equity on the accelerator side of the equation, those that are a little more sophisticated, or they might be looking for venture capital. These incubators and accelerator models are located now throughout the United States. All 43 of our partners who are there in place to help you. And they target socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. So if you are listening and you are a business that is looking for funding, come out and see us. Let us help you with that. The second success story that I'd love to share about is partnership that we have with Benedict College. That's a historically black college and university. What we know is that school was funded with an SBA Women's Business Enterprise center. And that's a great model for how MBDA and the SBA are collaborating. We also funded that college with one of our Capital Readiness Program grants. That's the funding that was used for this SSBCI that I just talked about. The name of the program is the Capital Readiness Program. Benedict College is one of the grant recipients. And the way they went after that grant strategically was under the business, the Women's Business center umbrella. And we know that women owned businesses are helping to drive one of the fastest growing business segments of our economy. Right. Women owned businesses. And so they went after this grant, secured the grant. And now that's a model example of the SBA and MBDA leveraging the federal government's resources to make an impact to socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. Not just women owned businesses, to be clear, but women and other minority and socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, which includes the full umbrella of business owners. And so those are two examples that I'm extremely excited about to bring good news. And what are the other sources to address the number one impediment for small businesses, and that is undoubtedly access to capital.

Jackson, chime in.

Joanne, I'm glad you brought up minority serving institutions. That brings me one. One thing that we are really proud about at the sba, and that was really hot off the press, is a new initiative we're calling this Tribal college Small Business Achievement Program, where we have partnered and provided, just provided award grants to four different tribal colleges across the country. There are more than 50 across the country. And we opened up a grant program and we weren't able to fund everybody, but we're really happy to partner with these tribal colleges so that they're able to give business training to not only their students, but also their community members. A lot of these tribal colleges are in places where it's an hour or an hour, maybe even two hours from some of our other partners we have at the Small Business Administration, like the Small Business development centers. And SBDCs are incredible, great resource. They're free. We encourage you to look at them. Go to sba.govlocal and you'll be able to connect with them. But if they're far from you, then you're not going to be able to have that access. And so we're able to partner with Salish and Kootenai Tribal College out in Montana, the Nebraska Indian College, which is in the Omaha Reservation in Macy, Nebraska, about an hour from Omaha, which is named after that tribe, and the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and then also Haskell Indian Nations University, which is in Lawrence, Kansas. And it's I really proud of the story where we're able to not only partner with these institutions, but also see these institutions as they evolve. Some of them, like Haskell University, were evolved, I guess, were developed in a time when there was a policy that schools like that were designed to take away culture, take away language and in and really help erase Native people. And that is no longer the paradigm now for these institutions, these tribal colleges. And that's no longer the paradigm of the government, this administration. And instead of trying to, I guess, take away that culture, we want to support it when you we also want to do it in a way that allows entrepreneurs to build things on their own, fund their ideas, get their ideas on paper and connect with other folks like the mbda. And once once folks of these tribal colleges are able to build out their dreams, their ideas and start businesses, they'll be able to connect with other folks in this ecosystem. Like one of our good partners at the SBA is the national center for American Indian Enterprise Development, and they're a big partner of the mbda and that's a great place where once hopefully these students and people in community that go to these tribal colleges and take these classes, get their business idea off the ground, they're able to connect with the national center and their resources. They have international trade resources that they're able to connect folks with government contracting, training, free technical assistance. A lot of this is by the sba, by E Commerce, by mbda, Department of Defense, their apex accelerators. And I think once we're able to connect folks to that ecosystem, that's really going to change that trajectory, that history of that institution that was really designed to take away the Native culture.

Jackson, I appreciate you double clicking on that. And in some ways the three of us really speak a similar language and we want more resources to be coming. And the comment you made about community navigators funding going away. I think everyone on this call has a shared mission around building equity into entrepreneurial ecosystem. So I wonder how you recommend folks on this call on this panel listening in, interact with the federal government from policymakers to you all in the agencies, what helps you do your job better, deploy more money to these efforts in a more sustainable way. Where and how is it appropriate for the folks closest to the ground to share feedback?

Maybe I'll let Joanne go first. I did the last one.

Thank you. Thank you, Jackson. Yeah. So a great example of how callers can get engaged and have their voice heard. Just this past June, NBDA held a capital formation forum. And as a part of that capital formation forum, we put out a call, if you will, an open call for feedback from the public to tell us, you know, what are the issues, what are the barriers that you're facing when you go to lending institutions and tell us if you have solutions that you would recommend. Right. So we put the, we put the call out to ask for feedback and we held a convening, a capital formation forum, convening of both regulators, financial institution regulators, as well as some of our partners like the major national chambers, right. Who have a diverse portfolio of chambers to the point that Jackson was making. We had our tribal leaders there, we had our Asian Americans, our Hispanic Americans, African American chambers, et cetera. Right. The U.S. chamber of Commerce, we had them and we had other financial regulators there to really have a heart to heart conversation about, you know, what are the challenges that businesses are facing and what is it that they're telling us they need from a policy standpoint to help them secure financing. We also had people like fintech partners, right. We know that they're helping to change the game, if you will, of lending to small and medium sized businesses. And so the thing that I would say is get in tuned and stay in tune with, you know, the, any upcoming events. If you are somebody who reads the American Banker, for example, you know, there's a ton of information about the policy agenda around things that are going to be impacting lending. The Office of the Comptroller of Currency is another one. You know, these folk have annual events, annual conferences. They're putting out calls for feedback on new policy agenda items. Stay informed and stay educated on issues related to lending and finance. You heard earlier where the comment was made about community development financial institutions, a wonderful resource we have. You heard me talk about the Capital Readiness Program, right. We have more than a dozen that are now our partners that have jumped into this game and said, you know, I want to get involved, I want to be a part of this capital readiness program too, because that's what we do. So we partner with, you know, any number of folk that are within the financial industry at the policy level, but also on the ground that are helping companies. But I would encourage you to get educated, stay educated, stay involved and when there is an opportunity, we will have another capital formation forum again next year. That forum this year was held back in June. Stay in tune to learn how you can provide feedback to help us when we get ready for the second round of a capital formation forum, likely around the same time period, if you will. So please stay on the lookout for that. Thank you.

Thanks. I'll add a couple more thoughts related to the sba and I think if you are on this call, I think you're already in tune, you're already engaged and I want to say thanks. Thanks to you and for leaning in and being engaged. I think that you had to be on the list here and you had to register and hopefully you're able to walk away with this with a bit more information and hopefully some excitement. And so I think that being by engage on things like lists is helpful. The SBA and federal agencies, we have a responsibility to do tribal consultation or let tribes know if we are going to make a rule that could impact them and consult with them in a meaningful way. And so the SBA, since I've been here, the SBA just a little more than two years, but in that timeframe we've done 15 either tribal consultations or listening sessions on a variety of topics, whether it's government contracting, which is a huge driver in some Native communities, up to $20 billion in business in 2022 went to American Indian, Alaska Native and Native wine organizations, or some of our work with the Small Business Development Centers or access to capital. And if you want to learn more about that, we encourage you to check out our website, sba.gov native. You can sign up for our newsletter. And if we're going to have any, any sort of consultation listening session, we will absolutely get it out there. Or social media, we're active on Instagram and Twitter or whatever is going by these days and we will make sure we get that word out there. But I think another question Matt, you had about AD was I guess we, I guess we, the SBA are always open, open to question. We don't have to wait for consultation. You can email us jackson.barrossi sba.gov or if you want to follow up on this. And always doors always open there. And, and our colleagues at the SBA are that way. I'm sure colleagues at Commerce and MBDA are that way as well. But Congress is able to allocate money and and we're not. And I'm not supposed to. To lobby either. But I will tell you that I've worked in advocacy for a while for the Navajo Nation and nonprofit that work for native CDFIs. And one thing I will tell you is that small business growth and supporting small businesses and helping people achieve their dreams is something that is bipartisan. I think both sides of the aisle want to see that people that have these dreams, put these dreams down on paper, invest in them, and get other people invested in them, and they want to see them succeed. And I think that members of Congress, whether they're a House Representative, Senate, or. Or your local ones in your state or city, they want to hear about your good stories. They want to. It helps them understand their constituents. It also helps them tell about the good that they're doing. And they want to hear your stories, and they also want to hear your challenges. And there is no reason, I think there isn't any reason not to reach out to your local member of Congress. They have staff, but it's their job to talk to you. And they probably do want to hear from you, because otherwise they hear from other people that they don't want to hear from. So I think you should absolutely reach out to them. Absolutely.

I appreciate you opening that door, Jackson, because I don't think it is just widely understood or, you know, I think there's a lot of nervousness feeling that the federal government's really far away from us. And even when these grants come out, it's like you go straight into grant mode. But, like, have you met anyone on that MBDA team? Have you met anyone on SBA team? When I kind of first started doing this work and someone asked me that question, I was like, oh, am I allowed to just email them and ask them questions? And so I think it's really important for everyone on this call to hear that the door is open. And from an advocacy perspective, I really encourage everyone on this call to check out the advocacy guides of Right to Start, which provides some really good language on the bipartisan issue that entrepreneurship is to both of your points. So really appreciate that. And if the SBA team has a chance here to just send any of the links that were mentioned, so it makes it easier for the audience to go straight in and start checking things out, that would be great. We have seven more minutes, and I don't want to leave it on too dark of a note, but I'd love for you to talk a little bit about maybe one common pitfall that you see whether it's from an applicant perspective or in programs that you've been engaged with or grantees or partners, what's the common pitfall that you really want folks to know, to be aware of as they build their programs, as they think about game changing strategies to increase access and equity in entrepreneurship ecosystems?

Sure, I'll start with that. The one thing that I see is companies feel like they have to go at it alone. You don't have to go at it alone. There is so much information and resources that are available that your tax dollars pay for. Right. And you should take advantage of those resources. The other coupled with that, I would say looking at a teaming partner, right? If you've got a business and you have a core competency and you're really great at that core competency, there are companies out here that are looking for teaming partners. And that teaming partner that you find by being engaged and involved in networks, which is what one of our Capital Readiness program pillars are, is centered to help you not only gain capacity, but build networks and then access capital. Those folk that you meet within those networks that might be the right partner for you to team with who has capacity and they can help you secure the bonding and perhaps help you even with some of the other assets that you need to strengthen your bid package if you're going after a contract. Right. And your loan package if you're going after financing. So I would say don't go at it alone. Don't feel like you have to be the lone ranger and you know that there's not help out here because there are a lot of folk out here that want to help and that want to give you great advice. There are a number of resources and I know we didn't talk about not crossing over, but I've worked with the SBA for many years and on the MBDA side, whenever we would have companies like that, we would tell them reach out to score. Reach out to the service corps retired executives at sba. They do a wonderful job and love to consult with companies that are looking for help. Right. And I would say leverage those resources, use us as partners as a one stop shop for government resources. We can help you with everything from growing and expanding your business both domestically and internationally here at mbda because we have the Commerce umbrella with the International Trade Administration, protecting your intellectual property, helping you to grow within your communities through our Economic Development Administration and more. And a lot more. I would encourage you to visit our website@mbda.gov and get in tune to the more than 130 footprints that we have that are available for your service. And if you'd like to follow up with me, my email is jhillbda.gov I will be more than happy to channel you. I will give you my expertise. But I will also have you connect with one of our either business centers, export centers, we have advanced manufacturing centers. We also have a federal procurement center. We have a portfolio of minority colleges and universities. You heard Jackson talk about the tribal colleges. We partner with them on some of those. We have 10 of them. We also have an enterprise in women of color portfolio and more. So Visit us@mbda.gov and again my email jhillbda.gov and I hope that brought some sunshine.

Yeah, I'm obsessed with the open door policy and the encouragement. Jackson, why don't you take two minutes and tell us a little bit about a common pitfall and I'll, I'll bring us home by the time we need to finish.

I'll, I'll do a common pit pitfall for some of our Native American entrepreneurs that we've met with and, and that's around access to capital and, and sadly there is a perception of both lenders and, and entrepreneurs that if, if a company is based on a reservation and that reservation land is held what they call in trust by the federal government that they are not able to get a loan from a bank. And technically that's not true. They can get a loan and they can actually securitize that loan. However, it is difficult and it takes way more steps and it's kind of outside the box of what normal lending is. And it's unfortunate that, that this pitfall exists and this pitfall has consequences for not only that entrepreneur but the, the community that would benefit from their investment, the community that would benefit from them hiring new people. And so this is not some, this is not anything that is new. This is something that's been around for a problem that was identified. I was reading the Access to Capital report that was put together in 2002 and then another one that was put together in 2013 and they both identified this problem, this pitfall and we've launched something called Native Lending Initiative to make some recommendations to change this. But the bottom line is these loans can, can be done and I'm happy to. I'll drop my email in the chat if folks have want to get deep dive in this but it's something that, that we care a lot about, our boss Administrator Guzman cares a lot about and we're some improvements and announcements this coming year.

Well thank you so much, Jackson, Joanne, for, for sharing the resources and the thoughts. The themes that I heard is one, just, just coming off of what you just said, anything is possible. We set our minds to it and we're listening to the problems that we're hearing over and over and over and over again, pausing and thinking how we can creatively solve them. And then secondly, meeting entrepreneurs where they are and teaming up, which means we've got to get out of our computers, we got to get out onto the streets, we got to go to those networking gatherings so we can take care of ourselves and make sure that we, you know, get our fuel to do that. But hopefully I will all meet you on the streets and email and it sounds like all of our doors are open. So really appreciate everyone coming out today and lots of other panels going on. So stay tuned and thanks to the SBA as well.

Thank you Maddie. Holidays. Bye bye.

Thank you all. Let's give Maddie, Jackson and Joanne a gift or emoji. Round of applause. What a great day this has been so far. Similar to yesterday, we built in some time to dive deeper into select ecosystem Topics. There are three breakout sessions happening concurrently starting at 2:40pm Eastern until 3:25pm Eastern. It's an opportunity to share your thoughts and participating and participate in some interesting conversations. To join, just click the reception tab. It looks like that home button on your menu screen, you're going to click that and then you're going to click on the session that you're most interested in attending. But right now we're going to take a quick, very quick break and then we're going to all head over to the breakout rooms starting at 2:40pm Eastern. I'm going to meet you back here on the main stage at 3:30pm Eastern to resume the program. As always, if you have any questions, just let us know in the chat. I'll see you soon.