Project Equity at the Morehouse Vision & Victory Conference

Black workers account for 13% of national workforce. We understand that 6 out of 10 black workers live in the south. Project Equity a few years back decided that we were going to focus on impacting black wealth by choosing certain localities around the country that represented either density of black workforce or black business ownership. >> It's wonderful to be here at the Vision and Victory Conference in Atlanta, Georgia with our partners from Morehouse to share our research findings and policy recommendations through our black employee ownership research project. Employee ownership is a really valuable tool to close the racial wealth gap because it's important for all workers to have access to quality jobs and to be able to build wealth and provide for their families. It was wonderful to see my colleague Tyler share the research and case studies and policy recommendations that builds on previous research work that we've done with Morehouse. Um, and it's really exciting to see that research evolve and inform our uh, work on the ecosystem development team around black employee ownership and some of the innovative approaches that we're taking and testing out in Atlanta in the Washington DC area. A big piece of what is needed to advance black EO is around access to capital. There is quite a bit of entrepreneurship in black communities already, but the question becomes, how do we grow these businesses to the level of scalability and be able to sustain these businesses where they're turning significant amounts of profits or surplus that goes back to the workforces that actually help generate that wealth and give folks the true opportunity to build wealth, not only build wealth for themselves, but for multiple generations to come. In my role on our regional engagement team, I've had the opportunity to organize some of our local and regional convenings. And I think it's a wonderful opportunity to take what we've learned from the data and research that we've done and apply it at the local and regional level. And I think that there's a need to fund and support more of those gatherings um both both locally, regionally, and nationally. In Atlanta alone, there's 450,000 black workers. As a relatively small nonprofit, Project Equity really needs to focus our resources and capacity on where we can have the greatest impact. >> In 2026, we're bringing back the National Employee Ownership Equity Summit, and I hope to see you there.