The pay gap for Black women continues to close at a glacial pace, and of course, the pandemic just made it … worse. A lot worse. (And that’s to say nothing of the horrible state of the funding gap.)

Yet despite such a dismal forecast, the ship is still turning around, slowly but surely — as long as everyone else keeps doing their part. The Harvard Business Review found that more Black women (17%) used the pandemic to start small businesses than white men (10%). It also reported that a mere 3% of Black women currently run mature businesses — which means that it’s really on the rest of the market to invest harder than ever, to commit long-term and ensure these gains can continue building for generations to come.

And we all have so much to gain from Black women’s success. Janelle Jones, the former chief economist at the Department of Labor, describes this as “Black women Best”: When we “reorient our thinking to put Black women first” — be it in policymaking or business investing or pretty much any sort of planning for the future — we end up “lifting everyone up in the process.”

At Ellevest, we’re celebrating Black History Month by recognizing the Black women in finance, business, government, and beyond who have fought ferociously — and won — for themselves, their communities, and a brighter future. Their successes make this a better world for all of us, and hopefully will pave the way for a lot more women like them to come.

1. Miko Branch 

Co-founder and CEO, Miss Jessie’s

Miko Branch opened her first salon with her sister Titi in Brooklyn in 1997. There were few natural hair products available back then, so they created their own based on the “concoctions” their grandmother, Jessie Mae, whipped up when they were kids. In 2004, they started marketing Miss Jessie’s Curly Pudding. It became a hit and launched the Branch sisters’ empire. Today, you can find the Miss Jessie’s line of products for curly, kinky, and wavy hair across the US in stores like Target. When Titi died unexpectedly in 2014, Miko continued on as a leader through her grief, fighting to keep her company going, and for the increasing acceptance of natural hair. 

“For me, my hair is about so much more than looks. It’s symbolic of those who came before me and fought for my right to feel unapologetically beautiful.”

2. Cori Bush

US Representative, Missouri’s First District

In 2014, politics were the furthest thing from Cori Bush’s mind. Her father is an alderman and former mayor in the St. Louis area, but Bush had a nursing degree, and her days were full with her work as a nurse, pastor, and community leader advocating for the unhoused. But then came the murder of Michael Brown, Jr. in Ferguson, and the protests that followed. Congresswoman Bush spent over a year protesting on the “Ferguson Frontline” and providing her services as a nurse and pastor to the community. Initially, when asked if she would run for office, she said no. But then she realized that to get “that heart, that community love” that she saw on the frontline into federal office, she had to run. 

In 2020, she became the first Black woman to represent Missouri in the House of Representatives, and she arrived to her orientation wearing a mask with Breonna Taylor’s name on it. Since being sworn in, she’s campaigned tirelessly — from a four-day bed-in on the Capitol steps to keep the pandemic eviction moratorium in effect, to testifying about the abortion she had as a teenager, to reviving the fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

“I’m going to fight to make sure every single person has access to health care, housing, and education. We’re talking about whether or not somebody can live. This is about life or death.”

3. Glynda C. Carr

President and CEO, Higher Heights for America

In 2011, Glynda C. Carr launched Higher Heights for America with Kimberly Peeler-Allen to build the political strength and leadership of Black women. Through it, you can learn about how to run for office or host a conversation about the political leadership gap for Black women. The associated Higher Heights PAC is the only political action committee dedicated to electing progressive Black women; it’s helped to get the largest number of Black women to ever serve in Congress and to get Black women elected mayors of the 100 largest cities across the country. Last year, she was at the forefront of the campaign that led to President Biden nominating Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

“Black women know that the only way to rid the country of its vile history is by voting, and not only on a national level, but also on local levels. Black women know that we possess a political power like no other.”

4. Lisa Cook

Economist and member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors

A professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University, Dr. Cook has spent her 20+ year career studying high-level policy and systems from the vantage point of those most vulnerable to them. Best known (and loved) for her work demonstrating how institutional racism and sexism block overall economic growth, she served on President Obama’s White House Council of Economic Advisers and reviewed the Fed’s policies on the Biden transition team. The coverage of her nomination by President Biden to serve on the Fed’s Board of Governors makes it pretty clear that she gets all the right people nervous. When she took office in May 23, she became the first-ever Black woman on the Fed’s board.

“If economics is hostile to women, it is especially antagonistic to Black women … The only way we’re going to remain a competitive, energetic, knowledge-creating profession is to incorporate as many and as different ideas as we can, and leverage those ideas.”

5. Kizzmekia Corbett

Immunologist

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett’s work on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s vaccine research and development team at the NIH resulted in one of the first COVID vaccines. In collaboration with biotech firm Moderna, Corbett helped develop the vaccine, led the preclinical studies, and helped design the clinical trial testing. Her hometown of Hillsborough, NC, declared January 12, 2021 as Dr. Kizzmekia “Kizzy” Corbett Day in recognition of her work to address vaccine hesitancy, particularly in the Black community. Also in 2021, she took her public education from Zoom forums and Twitter all the way to Harvard, where she now teaches as an assistant professor in its public health school’s immunology department. 

“Vaccines have the potential to be the equalizer of health disparities, especially around infectious diseases. I could never sleep at night if I developed anything — if any product of my science came out — and it did not equally benefit the people that look like me. Period.”

6. Morgan DeBaun 

Entrepreneur and CEO / founder of Blavity

In 2014, Morgan DeBaun launched Blavity (a portmanteau of “Black” and “gravity”), a community for young multicultural creators to connect, express themselves, and be heard. She and her co-founders raised $1 million in venture capital funding — making her one of the very few venture-backed CEOs who is a young Black woman. Today, Blavity is a digital content, tech, and events company that reaches millions of people a month with a mission to “economically and creatively support Black millennials across the African diaspora, so they can pursue the work they love, and change the world in the process.” DeBaun has also proven prescient: Blavity has been hosting their annual AfroTech conference in the metaverse since 2020.

And Blavity’s not her only business — she’s also the founder of business advisory company WorkSmart, skincare company M. Roze Essentials, and Growth Notebook, a line of productivity and mindset planners. And she’s working on a book.

“It’s important to create spaces for those of us who are made to feel as though we don’t belong or that we’re not good enough — because the truth is, we do, and we are.”

7. Ceyenne Doroshow

Performer, speaker, and founder of G.L.I.T.S.

As a child growing up trans in the ’70s and ’80s, Ceyenne Doroshow was sent to therapists in an attempt to “cure” her, which only left her feeling more alone. She ran away many times as a teenager, but eventually found New York’s nightclub scene, where she thrived as a performer. Now founder and executive director of Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society, Doroshow is working to provide holistic care to LGBTQIA+ sex workers and lift up Black trans voices. 

In June 2020, she crowdfunded more than a million dollars (practically overnight) to secure stable, long-term housing for Black trans people in New York. In 2021, she was a grand marshal at Pride in New York City. And earlier this year, she appeared in The Stroll, a documentary about trans women of color in New York’s Meatpacking District that debuted at Sundance.

“Giving people opportunities is a wonderful thing. Not failing them is the bigger thing — not letting them fail themselves.”

8. Kathryn Finney 

Founder, digitalundivided and Project Diane

While growing her influential fashion blog, Kathryn Finney says, she realized that Black women make up just 3% of the tech industry, and Latina women only 2%. So she sold her blog and launched digitalundivided to change that. Since 2013, her company has helped Black and Latina women entrepreneurs raise more than $25 million in funding through incubator programs, research, and community. (No wonder Essence called her “the fairy godmother of tech start-ups.”) 

She also leads Project Diane, a biennial report on the state of Black and Latinx women founders and their companies that helps inform global and national policy. And in 2020, she launched a fund to support women entrepreneurs during the pandemic — giving help to more than 1,500 business owners in one year. Her book Build the Damn Thing, which was published last year, also spawned a companion podcast that recently wrapped its second season.

“It hit me that it was the first time, as an overachiever, that people had zero expectations of me. No one wanted to talk to this lone Black chick in the room. I had to push hard just to be seen, let alone to be heard.” 

9 and 10. Vanessa Garrison and T. Morgan Dixon

Co-founders, GirlTrek and Black History Bootcamp

T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison became college friends in 1996 after bonding over their shared passion for radical self-care. In 2010, they challenged their friends and family to walk with them to heal their bodies, inspire their daughters, and reclaim the streets of their neighborhood. And so GirlTrek was born. Now, it’s the largest public health non-profit for Black women and girls in the US, with a mission to “pioneer a health movement for African American women and girls grounded in civil rights history and principles through walking campaigns, community leadership, and health advocacy.” In 2020, as the Black Lives Matter movement grew strong, they launched Black History Bootcamp, a series of walking meditations to honor Black women freedom fighters.

“When women are walking and talking together, it’s transformative.” — T. Morgan Dixon

11. Nikole Hannah-Jones

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and creator of the 1619 Project

Nikole Hannah-Jones isn’t just aninvestigative journalist — she’s theinvestigative journalist. A MacArthur Fellow and staff writer at the New York Times Magazine, she won the Pulitzer for commentary in 2020 for her contribution to the 1619 Project, the groundbreaking 2019 Times journalism package that recontextualized the legacy of slavery in America and proposed dramatic, long-overdue changes to how our country’s history is taught to schoolchildren. (The project’s inclusion in educational syllabi was what sparked the nationwide political debacle around “critical race theory” and various seminal works of literature.) Now a tenured professor at Howard University, Hannah-Jones recently oversaw the premiere of the Hulu series adaptation The 1619 Project.

“I think we have to ask ourselves … the narrators, the storytellers, the journalists: Are we ringing the alarm in the right way? Are we doing our jobs to try to uphold our democracy?”

12. Blair Imani

Writer, mental health advocate, and historian

If you’ve seen Blair Imani’s “Smarter in Seconds” videos, you know she’s brilliant at taking complex ideas about topics like cultural appropriation, gender, racism, intersectional feminism, and religion and turning them into vibrant, funny, memorable content. (Costumes are sometimes involved.) But Imani’s also great at educating in longer formats: Her TEDx talk, “Queer & Muslim: Nothing to Reconcile,” which talked about her bisexual and Muslim identities (and told the story of how she chose to come out on a conservative talk show), went viral and sparked a national conversation. And her three books — one an illustrated history of the Great Migration from the South, one an illustrated celebration of women and non-binary people making change, and one based on “Smarter in Seconds” — also show her great talent for making history and activism actually … fun.

“I grew up in the ’90s, so edutainment was my bread and butter. History doesn’t have to be boring. It’s actually very exciting, if you approach it the right way.”

13. Marah Lidey

Co-founder and co-CEO, Shine

Marah Lidey’s first experience of racism was in the first grade, when another student assaulted her. Living life within “compounding systemic racism and generational trauma,” she says, “has wreaked havoc on Black well-being” and “the state of our collective mental health.” When she and Naomi Hirabayashi were coworkers, they began talking about the stress and anxiety they experienced — but as women of color, they couldn’t relate to any of the self-care apps they saw. So they created Shine, which sends users a daily text with tips to meditate, cope with stress, and connect with a supportive and inclusive community. 

In 2020, just as stay-at-home orders were first being issued, Lidey and Hirabayashi launched Virus Anxiety, a free toolkit and “safe space on the internet” to help everyone take care of themselves and get the support they need to cope with the pandemic. When Lidey and Hirabayashi sold Shine to Headspace Health in September 2022, both assumed leadership roles in the company.

“I’ve come to the humble realization that I’m the only one with my unique experience — and that inherently is worthwhile.”

14. Dame Pat McGrath

CEO and founder, Pat McGrath Labs

Pat McGrath, whom Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour once called “the most influential makeup artist in the world,” came up in London’s club scene in the ’80s — when, she said, women of color couldn’t find makeup that made them look good. She’s dominated runways since the ’90s with her bold, art-inspired vision, and she’s currently dominating Instagram (not to mention the beauty industry) with the same. In 2018, Pat McGrath Labs, the makeup company she founded just three years earlier, became a unicorn (worth $1 billion); her product drops still sell out in minutes. In December 2020, McGrath became the first makeup artist ever to receive a damehood.

“I think in my career I have chosen to embrace freedom over fear. I have felt free to make the creative decisions I wanted to make, to take risks.”

15. Bozoma St. John

Author and former CMO, Netflix

Bozoma St. John refers to herself as a “badass,” and her career as “the world’s most rockstar marketer” is proof she’s right. As the head of music and entertainment marketing for Pepsi, she landed a $50 million deal with Beyoncé. As head of global consumer marketing at Apple Music and iTunes, she brought passion to her job, leading a memorable series of ads starring Taraji P. Henson, Mary J. Blige, and Kerry Washington. And in June 2020, she was hired as the chief marketing officer at Netflix, where she became the first Black person in the C-suite and led a new marketing approach during a huge era for the company. While she departed the company in March of 2022, she’s kept busy: Her memoir, “The Urgent Life,” about surviving the death of her husband and her approach to business, is due out via Viking in February 2023.

“Advice that I have … for Black women, in particular, is that we actually have to own our unique ability and our unique experiences — and tout them. I am doing it and I would like the rest of us to continue doing it — to push, push, push — not to subscribe to what has been told to us that we are supposed to look like and behave like, but to really be who we are and therefore, make room for others when it’s their turn.”

Disclosures