Women of Colour Connecting Story
Opening Doors to Success: Women of Color Connecting is Creating the Connections that Entrepreneurs Need to Succeed
For Jill Johnson, CEO and Co-founder of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership (IFEL), an entrepreneur’s identity shouldn’t be a barrier to their success within the ecosystem. Unfortunately, however, the reality for many founders of color, and particularly women of color, is that the odds are stacked against them.
“Founders of all backgrounds should have an equal opportunity to succeed or fail,” Johnson says.
“The problem isn’t failure itself—that’s just part of being an entrepreneur. The problem is that some people are being relegated to failure from the beginning, and never get that same opportunity for success.”
Early in her career, it became clear to Johnson that certain groups of entrepreneurs had more difficulty raising money and accessing other resources to build their businesses. She realized that business owners in her community used business ownership as self-employment while others used it to build wealth. She co-founded IFEL as a nonprofit organization in 2002 with her father with the goal of helping more people create a pathway to wealth through entrepreneurship. While IFEL helped hundreds of businesses annually, it was an eye-opening report came across her desk in 2018 showing the bleak state of women-owned businesses compounded by her own personal gender bias experience that led her to launch the Women of Color Connecting movement.
“By every measure of success, Black women are at the bottom,” Johnson said.
The numbers were eye-opening for Johnson and prompted a shift in IFEL’s focus from supporting individual entrepreneurs as the solution to these challenges to a broader focus on the ecosystem at large, which in its current state makes it nearly impossible for women of color to have an equal opportunity to succeed.
“We knew these challenges existed, but we began to unpack why they exist and how to overcome the barriers to change the system,” Johnson says.
Women of Color Connecting, known as WOCCON, leverages IFEL’s vast network to engage allies, investors, and champions in a movement to get more women of color on a path to building greater wealth through their businesses. WOCCON hosts in-person road show events around the United States along with an annual virtual summit, all designed to create connections between people with the power to open doors and women of color entrepreneurs. The WOCCON 2022 Virtual Summit is scheduled for March 7-9, 2023.
“It’s really about the power of relationships and connections. If you do not have strong networks, then who opens doors for you?” Johnson says. “Every single person out there, if they are honest with themselves, will be able to think back to someone who opened the door to every significant opportunity that they have received.
“We want to help facilitate that through WOCCON. We’re connecting amazing people to amazing entrepreneurs.”
Johnson says everyone has a role to play in improving the numbers. To really embrace and support a more diverse ecosystem, Johnson says those with power, privilege and resources need to think about how they can leverage it to foster inclusion.
“How can you use that to help support a woman of color entrepreneur? It doesn’t have to be a heavy lift, and it isn’t even necessarily about writing cheques,” Johnson says. “Everyone can be involved, everyone can connect and build relationships and everyone can open a door for someone.
“If each of us does that, we’ll start to see change.”