55. Empowering Black Entrepreneurs and Closing the Wealth Gap with Jessica Norwood

The Fiscal Feminist

The average Black American has about 13 times less wealth than white Americans, so it’s time for something to change. In this episode, Kimberlee talks with Runway Founder and CEO Jessica Norwood about the massive wealth gap for Black Americans and the work she’s doing to change that. Through Runway, Jessica is empowering Black entrepreneurs with capital and mentorship, and she’s also a speaker, author, and podcast host at the forefront of conversations about the intersection of race and economics, and she has so many powerful insights to share in this conversation.

Episode Recap:

• Today we’re talking with Jessica Norwood, founder and CEO of Runway (0:56)
• Can you tell us about your career journey up to this point? (4:14)
• Why is access to education so important for disadvantaged groups? (10:43)
• Black entrepreneurs just don’t have the same access to capital or mentorship (16:06)
• How is Runway helping Black entrepreneurs? (26:45)
• An intersectional approach to capital (38:33)
• What role can the government play in financial equity? (45:32)
• Where to learn more from Jessica (55:13)

Resources:

• Find every episode of the Fiscal Feminist podcast
• “The Fiscal Feminist” book
• Runway website
• Preorder “Believe in You Money” by Jessica Norwood
• Road to Repair podcast
• Jessica’s website

Quotes:

“I wanted to better my community. I wanted to support the innovators and change makers and just brilliance that I saw all around me. But I also saw that there was this gap of being able to get access to the resources that people needed, and I couldn’t understand why.”

“Wealth gets unequally distributed because of racial bias. And it looks like, at the time when I started Runway this was a piece of data that was so new, I want to say it was about 6 or 7 years ago, the data has since been updated. But the number then was that white people had $141,000 in wealth and Black families had about $11,000. And this was including the wealthiest wealthy that you could think of, right, on both sides of the equation. So I like to say it’s P Diddy and all my cousins in that number. And it’s about $10, 11 thousand. And then you’ve got uber, uber wealthy, wealthy folks, billionaire folks, and all your cousins in there. And still the number lays out to this disparity between almost 13 times, 14 times more than the other.”