As a news anchor in New York, Cathleen Trigg-Jones said she experienced firsthand the discrimination women of color face in the male-dominated entertainment industry. So, in 2019, she made a career pivot and launched iWoman TV — a media company led by women, featuring shows with female leads. The only problem was she needed money to sustain the business. Trigg-Jones said she applied for funding from grant groups, venture capital funds and investors, but most of them denied her.
“Women of color are the least funded but the most founded,” Fearless Fund co-founder and CEO Arian Simone told CNN last month. Though he acknowledged the disparities exist, Blum told CNN “venture capital funding gaps between the races is never a legal or moral justification to exclude certain men and women from public programs by race or ethnicity.