Shelly Bell, founder and chief executive officer of Black Girl Ventures, has set in motion plans to allocate the $500,000 investment from Nike Inc.
In an interview Wednesday, Bell revealed Black Girl Ventures will launch a fellowship in the Chicago area which will give an opportunity for women to receive a stipend and wraparound assistance to grow their businesses. That will include coaching, mentoring, leadership and development, and media training. They will also work to get them media opportunities. “The point is to make them go to leaders in their ecosystem,” said Bell.
Bell said she became acquainted with Nike through building relationships. “My board chair did a cold outreach to introduce us to one of the team members who was working on the project. Through that we stayed diligent with follow-up,” she said. When the time came, “we were responsive and had all our ducks in a row.”
Providing an example of how they’ve helped a company, she said Black Girl Ventures recently launched its first pitch competition for sustainable beauty products. They partnered with Rare Beauty Brands, which brought ultabeauty.com to the table. The winner was Kim Roxie of Lamik Beauty in Houston, who will have the opportunity to have her products sold on Ultabeauty.com.
Bell said they decided to allocate the Nike money to Chicago, because they’ve done their pitch competitions twice there.
BGirlVentures ❤🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵