How to Close the Racial Wealth Gap

Interview with Darrin Redus, Vice President and Executive Director, Cincinnati Minority Business Accelerator 

29 September 2020 | Issue 19 | Tiger Hill Capital

Welcome to this week’s edition of Powering Prosperity Weekly.

This weekly newsletter looks at issues relating to the Global Economic Transition that will play out over the coming 20-30 years (see my April 13 introductory article on LinkedIn for additional context).

This week we are focused on closing the racial wealth gap. The Covid pandemic has highlighted and magnified deeply rooted inequalities in societies across the world. In the US, Black and Hispanic communities have long suffered from a lack of investment in their social services, their infrastructure, and their businesses. The resulting gaps in wealth as well as education and health outcomes have rendered these communities highly vulnerable to economic shocks. The same story is playing out in Afro-Caribbean, South Asian, and Middle Eastern communities across Europe.

We address this immense challenge from two angles. Firstly, this afternoon Indranil will lead a panel which will discuss how sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) can improve the economic inclusion of people of color by bringing together a global group of leading SWFs, development investors, and business-building platforms that share this vision. You can find more details on the panel and the other speakers below:

Secondly, we look at how to help scale minority-owned businesses. We feature an interview with Darrin Redus, Vice President and Executive Director of the Cincinnati Regional Chamber's Minority Business Accelerator (CMBA). A direct and highly effective way to close the racial wealth gap is to invest in the businesses of talented entrepreneurs of African and Hispanic origin. By connecting minority entrepreneurs with capital, commerce, and innovation, we create the opportunity to build global businesses that will generate extraordinary financial and social returns for people of color.

We’ve created a slide-deck on Powering Minority Entrepreneurs to accompany Darrin’s interview which you can access here. The presentation summarizes his insights on the work of the CMBA and how to grow minority businesses. Via the presentation, you can listen to audio snippets of Darrin's reflections on the following topics by clicking on the links in the title slides. 

- How Darrin's career as a Commercial Loan Officer sparked his passion 

- Why Ohio is such a hub for businesses

- Ohio's demographic make-up

- How 4x lower net worth prevents Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs from self-funding businesses

- How the CMBA has helped create 3,500 new jobs and made Ohio a leading place for minority-owned businesses

- How to improve companies' diversity performance

- How CMBA's model will be replicated across the US 

Alternatively you can listed to the conversation in one go on Spotify or the Powering Prosperity podcast page.

Darrin started his career thirty years ago as a banker at National City bank in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was one of only three African American Commercial Loan Officers with lending authority. This experience sparked a lifelong passion inside him to help power minority-owned businesses.

Darrin walks us through the CMBA’s success in growing an impressive roster of minority enterprises, and we discuss how the CMBA’s business model is being used as a template by other minority business accelerators across America. We also touch on the big challenges that remain, such as the under-utilization of minority talent in corporations.

Indeed, as the wealth gap persists and it becomes increasingly clear that good talent is being underutilized, more people are beginning to ask—could the economic inclusion of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) be the next big global investment imperative?

If you would like to find out more about the Cincinnati Minority Business Accelerator, you can visit their website here, and you can find Darrin on Linkedin here.