I think what's so powerful is that
at the end of the day, Common Future,
all of us are still operating within capitalism.
We operate within the system.
And yet for us, it's really important that we can model
what it looks like to not prioritize your own returns
as an institution, to give up power, to enable individuals
and institutions that are most proximate to the challenges,
that are directly experiencing those challenges,
to actually have the power to redress them.
That is such a fascinating shift in thinking.
At Common Future,
the thing that we really focus on
is racial wealth inequality.
It's a large problem
and a significant challenge to many many people.
One of the major challenges that people of color
looking to get access to capital
as they're launching businesses face
is the racial wealth gap.
The fact that white households have significantly more
wealth accrued over generations
that African American households do not have
because of the legacy of racialized policies,
slavery, Jim Crow, redlining.
We've developed a system that
continuously perpetuates inequalities.
And the challenge is so large and looming
because of the fact that there are no simple fixes.
So I see Common Future as a think and do tank
that really focuses on action.
And primarily our work is about allocating power
and investment capital to institutions
and leaders that have been most directly impacted
by economic and racial injustice.
So what does that look like?
We provide financial support and collaboration to black
and indigenous led institutions that are primarily focused
on supporting the economic empowerment
of small business owners of color in their communities.
And what we've been able to do as an intermediary
is actually be able to work with these institutions
to construct investment opportunities
and economic models of their own design
that are really meant to create power
for those individual communities.
The Racial Equity Asset Lab is fiscally sponsored
by Common Future.
They set me up to be able to develop the idea
and then actually have it funded.
The Racial Equity Asset Lab has worked to build up
an ecosystem and infrastructure that very well supports
small business entrepreneurship.
It's affirming to know that there's an organization
that believes in you.
Common Future's not a traditional intermediary.
What they really see us as is like a trusted partner,
a collaborator, someone that has their back.
We're connecting influence
and capital between wealth holders
and those that are creating the wealth in their communities.
And so we intermediate relationships, resources,
influence between the two.
To me Common Future is this incredible network
because the way it operates is really as this kind of
support mechanism to all of these different
small business leaders, social entrepreneurs.
It's able to ensure that there's cross learning
and that there's the opportunity to really kind of identify
and push out new models for how we can design an economy
that is restorative rather than extractive.
That's when we start to see the paradigm shift
of how we think about moving our economy forward.
Both in our leadership and our organization,
there are significant POC, people of color presence.
Why is this important?
We have direct emotive connection,
a lived experience to these challenges.
It's what motivates us as individuals
but also as an institution.
The other piece of it though,
is that we see opportunity where others do not.
They might see risk.
We don't see that risk, we see opportunity.
We see African American women and we see opportunities
for us to invest in them where others may ask questions.
Why invest in this institution?
Why invest in that community?
Well, we're from those places, we're from those communities,
we're intimately connected to those stories
and those experiences.
We identified organizations that already
have phenomenal leaders.
What they were lacking was someone that trusted them.
To say like what would it look like
without Common Future,
I don't know that there would be a,
in all honestly I don't know that there would be
a Racial Equity Asset Lab.
People oftentimes ask us what's our secret sauce.
They want to hear some kind of technical innovation
or some kind of technocratic intervention
or something of that nature.
And quite frankly it's just that our colleagues
have incredible intelligence.
They have lived experience, they are deeply committed.
They are people who are willing to give up power.
That is what makes us successful.