Lin-Manuel Miranda believes artists and small businesses have something in common—here's why
By Andrew Bevan
Lin-Manuel Miranda isn't a celebrity you see on television hawking things all the time, but, since 2018, Miranda has worked with American Express on an initiative created as a steadfast drive to support and inspire small business owners (and shoppers).
The multi-hyphenate entertainer says the company's consistent track record of backing the Hispanic and Latinx community with various programs and services has been admirable. These efforts include a $1 million grant to the Hispanic Scholarship fund, which fosters youth leadership and educational initiatives and college education, a fellowship program with Luminary to help support 150 Latina-owned businesses, and inclusive backing grants to small Hispanic business owners, as well as a $2 million grant funding to the Hispanic Federation to aid small nonprofits. As part of Amex's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plan, the overall push supports the company's recent goal to invest an additional $3 billion toward its DE&I initiatives globally through 2025.
Miranda's continued work with Amex is hands on, with a grassroots emphasis on the restorative efforts of his family's homeland of Puerto Rico as well as his own stomping grounds of Washington Heights—a seemingly near-perfect case study of why small businesses are what he calls the "lifeblood" of the neighborhood.
"They are all largely Latin-owned and essentially the main characters of my first Broadway show, In the Heights," he explains. "You know everyone on that block has your back. That makes my neighborhood special and gives it a sense of community."
With a Pulitzer Prize, multiple Grammy, Tony, and Emmy awards, and a few Oscar nominations, Miranda himself can now add small business owner to his list of achievements. In 2019, after rent hikes threatened to close New York City's century-old Drama Book Shop, Miranda and In the Heights and Hamilton director Thomas Kail joined forces with theater producers Jeffrey Seller and James L. Nederlander to buy and revive the wavering business—a place the star admits he owes an enormous debt to as an artist (and where Miranda and Kail first met).
In a 2019 interview with Fast Company, Miranda advised, "Bigger than the product you sell is making yourself indispensable to the neighborhood." Today The Drama Book Shop is a testament to that mantra.
"I never thought I'd be a small business owner. But Tommy and I looked at each other and said, this thing needs to continue to exist," he says. "In that way, artists and small business owners are the same. So you ask yourself, what doesn't exist here that should? Can I bring it into existence, and can I support it, and find a way in which it can thrive?"
Miranda says that small businesses can't survive in a vacuum.
"I love theater because I don't like making things alone," says the artist who recently penned lyrics for the new music featured in Disney's highly anticipated 2023 live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid. "I have learned in a real nuts-and-bolts, dollars-and-cents way that The Drama Book Shop's fortunes are tied to the health of the Broadway community itself. So when theater has a good week, we have a good week. When theater struggles to stay afloat in the wave of something like an Omicron variant, we struggle to stay afloat."
The performer's business mindset seems to run in his blood. As a child, Miranda spent formative summers in Puerto Rico bouncing between his grandmother's travel agency, his grandfather's video store, and his uncle's restaurant.
"I have a kid's eye view of my family's businesses," Miranda says. "My favorite was the three years that the video store existed. I'd watch movies in the back, like Double Dragon II. That's pretty much heaven for a 9-year-old."
He may have had ringside seats to his family's challenges, but Miranda gained valuable insight.
"I knew it was hard, but I saw these spaces as not only a place to do business but a place where people gather. My grandmother knew all the gossip in the town because everyone bought plane tickets from her," he recalls. "In that sense, The Drama Book Shop is an extension of my grandparents' work. It's not just a place to buy a book. It's also a place where you're around other like-minded folks."
Miranda is also grateful for Amex's ongoing relief effort in Puerto Rico. Since the devastation of 2017's Hurricane Maria, 2018's Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael, and most recently Hurricane Fiona, Miranda and the company continue to make extensive efforts to help repair and drive prosperity. Amex committed $250,000 to the Hispanic Federation to help create jobs, rebuild the economy, and promote sustainable small business growth throughout the island. This contribution was in addition to the $1 million they donated in the fall of 2017 to assist with immediate relief efforts, as well as a donation of $300,000 in 2018 to the American Red Cross.
In early 2019, Miranda spearheaded a $15 million effort to raise funds for arts organizations and artists that were forgotten by recovery efforts on the island by bringing his Tony Award-winning show Hamilton to the island.
Now in the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Fiona, the American Express Foundation has committed $50,000 to the Hispanic Federation and $50,000 to the American Red Cross to support relief efforts in the region to support the distribution of essential supplies.
"With Fiona, we are still in crisis mode of [delivering] literally food and water to folks who need it. The amount of damage that massive rainfall caused is still being assessed," says Miranda. "One of the silver linings with Fiona that is different from Maria is that we never lost cell phone contact with the island. We've been able to check in with our family. They still don't have running water or electricity, but like all Puerto Ricans, have shown unbelievable resilience."
Miranda explains Hurricanes Irma and Maria destroyed nearly 80 percent of Puerto Rico's coffee production—one of the island's most extensive and culturally significant small business industries. However, after five years of regenerative agriculture practices, the island's latest coffee crop harvest was on course to return to pre-hurricane levels for the first time.
"It's painful to talk about it. We worked hard to help revive those farms in the wake of Maria. I was there last week celebrating that these farmers were getting a harvest in two years instead of the typical three," he says. "Once we get through the phase of immediate relief, we'll assess how we can help those small businesses thrive by sharing best practices and creating more resilient crops, so they are more resistant to natural disasters."