There is a great deal of work to be done to create a more equitable environment for Black entrepreneurs trying to prosper in the fashion industry . Now a partnership between Brooklyn, New York-based AFROPUNK, known for music festivals and artisan marketplaces, and Ontario-based e-commerce platform Shopify, is helping to remedy the problem. The two organizations have teamed up to start the Black Fashion Accelerator Program (BFA), a free, intensive online business training course for founders with clothing and accessory lines. "The idea that Black entrepreneurship in this field is seriously overlooked and undervalued meant we needed to make a difference," says Anita Asante, AFROPUNK's Global Strategic Brand Partnership Lead. The nine entrepreneurs, who were chosen from a pool of 902 applicants, have now reached the midway point of the six-month program. They're learning the fundamentals to grow and scale their businesses--budgeting, bookkeeping, supply chain management, and … [Read more...] about The Fashion Industry Has Not Been Welcoming to Black Entrepreneurs. A New Program Is Trying to Change That
Sophia amoruso
1 dead, 2 hurt in Legazpi City road accident
LEGAZPI CITY — An 18-year-old girl was killed while two others were injured when their vehicle turned upside down in a road accident in Legazpi City in Albay province early Sunday, August 7. Police Lieutenant Dennis Balla, Legazpi City police chief, identified the fatality as Sophia Manzanades while the injured victims were identified as Paolo Justin Lita and Mark Pacardo. Initial investigation revealed that the victims’ Toyota Fortuner swerved to the opposite lane and hit the gutter and garden box before it bumped into the light post and rested upside down along Washington Drive in Barangay (village) 16 at around 1:30 a.m. It subsequently a nearby parked motorcycle. The victims were taken to two different hospitals but Manzanades died while being treated. Balla said according to a witness, a Toyota Wigo driven by an unidentified man overtook to the right outer lane before the victims’ vehicle swerved to the opposite lane. Investigation is ongoing to identify the … [Read more...] about 1 dead, 2 hurt in Legazpi City road accident
Leadership Across The Life Cycle Of A Business
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Travel Industry Leader @ Accenture | Public Speaker | Passionate Diversity & Inclusion Leader | Networking Champion. Every city, organization and business has something in common: a defined life cycle. Take New Orleans, for example. US Route 90—a segment of the Ponchartrain expressway—cuts through the heart of New Orleans, linking the south coast of Lake Ponchartrain with communities below the Mississippi River. If you’ve traveled to “NOLA” before, you’re familiar with the east side of the expressway, as that’s where you find the business district and all the carousing of the French Quarter. The west side of the expressway—at least the immediate west—is a different environment altogether. Hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the “Central City” still wrestles with homelessness, underemployment, repopulation and inadequate infrastructure. So why even mention the west side of the expressway at all? Because it’s … [Read more...] about Leadership Across The Life Cycle Of A Business
High-Profile Investment Firm Suffers $23 Billion Loss On Big Tech
Japanese technology investment firm SoftBank Group Corp. lost more than $23 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2022, according to The Wall Street Journal. The massive losses have already led to a pivot in investment strategy, with subsidiary Vision Fund approving only $600 million in new investments during the first quarter, $20 billion less than the same time last year, according to Reuters . In conjunction with a slowdown in investments, Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son announced that there would be significant cost cuts, including layoffs, the WSJ reported. (RELATED: ‘Market Crash’: Robinhood Announces More Layoffs As Crypto Trading Tanks) “I have no choice but to cut a significant number of employees at the Vision Fund,” he said at a press conference according to the WSJ. He said the company needed to undergo “cost cuts with no sacred cows.” SoftBank’s technology stocks have fallen from inflationary pressures and rising interest rates from central banks … [Read more...] about High-Profile Investment Firm Suffers $23 Billion Loss On Big Tech
The Enduring Idiocy Of Groveling For An ‘A’ Table At A Restaurant
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin At a time when some of the toughest reservations to get are at storefront eateries in Brooklyn with long communal tables, the outdated idea that restaurateurs deliberately design their dining rooms to have “good” and “bad” tables is as preposterous as deliberately writing a novel with good and bad chapters. As every restaurateur will tell you, theirs is a business that depends on the total utilization of every square foot of a room to maximize occupancy, while allowing for flow, décor and the ability of the kitchen to deliver a certain amount of food per hour. peggy hopkins joyce Yes, there once really was such a thing as “Siberia,” a term for a section of a restaurant dining room considered either socially inferior or merely poor seating that was coined back in the 1930s when society woman Peggy Hopkins Joyce entered the class-conscious El Morocco nightclub in New York and found herself being led to a less than … [Read more...] about The Enduring Idiocy Of Groveling For An ‘A’ Table At A Restaurant
How Rising Interest Rates Affect Private Credit
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Robert Amoruso is the Founder and CEO of Gideon Strategic Partners , a boutique investment advisory firm based in Santa Monica. One of the fastest-growing asset classes over the past five years has been private credit, which has catapulted to an estimated $1.6 trillion market as interest rates sank and bond yields lost their luster. Spurred by the 2008 exit of merchant banking, in addition to issues with syndicated loan platforms, private credit funds have aggressively captured a share from the traditional bank channels. Conventional wisdom would dictate that if private credit saw a boost in a declining interest rate environment, the asset class should suffer as the Federal Reserve Board continues to hike rates to stave off inflation. However, private credit’s concentration in floating rate credits put these strategies in lockstep with rising interest rates. Opportunities For UHNW Investors There … [Read more...] about How Rising Interest Rates Affect Private Credit
Want That New Habit to Stick? Science Says Do It in the Morning
Establishing new habits is notoriously difficult . New science might make it just a little easier. A study published in the journal Health Psychology has some dead simple advice for anyone hoping to finally make that new, healthy habit stick. Instead of trying to do whatever it is before bed, make your new habit the first thing you do when you get up in the morning. The findings suggest that if you make this small change, the new habit will become automatic 50 days sooner than if you do the habit at night. 105 days versus 154 days. To figure this out, scientists recruited a small group of 48 university students for a 90-day experiment. Each day the students were instructed to do a simple 15-second stretch. Half were told to do it first thing in the morning, while the other half were told to do it at night. The researchers then used an app to check up on whether the students remembered to stretch and how much thought had gone into carrying out the new habit. … [Read more...] about Want That New Habit to Stick? Science Says Do It in the Morning
Treat Yourself To The Best Restaurants In Washington, DC And Alexandria
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin While many local residents use the hot and humid weather as an excuse to leave the DMV area this time of year, August is arguably one of the most delicious times to be here. Whether you’re in the mood for a fancy night out, an elevated lunchtime experience or an epic brunch, two Restaurant Week events — in Washington, D.C. and Alexandria, Virginia — have got you covered, with specially priced menus and deals at some of the region’s best restaurants. Here’s a look at this summer’s edition. Metropolitan Washington Restaurant Week Metropolitan Washington Restaurant Week happens August 15–21, with $25 lunch and brunch deals and $40 or $55 prix fixe menus at the following restaurants in Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia and Maryland: District of Columbia: 1789 Restaurant & Bar, Agora, Al Dente, Ala, Alero Restaurant – U St., All-Purpose Pizzeria (Shaw and Capitol Riverfront), Alta Strada City Vista, Ambar, Angolo … [Read more...] about Treat Yourself To The Best Restaurants In Washington, DC And Alexandria
These frozen coffee pods are the future of barista-quality coffee at home
Each morning for the past two weeks, I’ve taken out a tiny aluminum capsule from my freezer. Inside is a small, frozen puck of coffee, which I pop in a glass and pour a few tablespoons of boiling water over from my kettle. As a Bostonian, I’ll drink iced coffee in a tundra, so I add ice cubes, top off the glass with almond milk and water, and toss the capsule into the recycling bin. And that’s the beauty of Cometeer . advertisement advertisement The new-ish company sells K-cup size capsules of flash-frozen brewed coffee, that are stashed in your freezer and reconstituted with hot water. They can also chill in your fridge or counter (or carry-on, as the company emphasizes, the capsules are TSA-compliant) for up to 24-hours and be added to cold water (or ice cream for affogato) once it melts. The capsules don’t explode or go bad if left defrosted, but the brand says the 24-hour window is when the “full complexity” is at its peak freshness. Cometeer … [Read more...] about These frozen coffee pods are the future of barista-quality coffee at home
Instagram Is Getting Into NFTs Months After They Crashed. Artists Are Wary But Hopeful.
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin As the crypto winter descended, so did NFT sales. After a rush into mainstream culture and nearly two years of explosive growth that peaked in November, NFT sales failed to hit $1 billion in July for the first time since June 2021, down from more than $5 billion in January. Sales on OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, fell 79% from May to July , and the company laid off 20% of its staff in mid-July. But the NFT downturn hasn’t stopped social media companies from launching new features this summer that seem to be built for the NFT-obsessed world of last winter’s crypto boom. Reddit, which had already been in the NFT space for more than a year, announced a marketplace for fixed-price NFTs that it billed as “collectible avatars” on July 7. Snap is testing NFTs as AR filters, the Financial Times reported in mid-July. And just last week, Meta announced that Instagram would allow users in 100 countries to … [Read more...] about Instagram Is Getting Into NFTs Months After They Crashed. Artists Are Wary But Hopeful.