The ESSENCE E-Suite Experience at the 2022 ESSENCE Festival of Culture pulled in all the heavy hitters in business, finance, and entrepreneurship to ensure that the next table you take a seat at as a businesswoman, and professional, you are equipped to set the entire table, eat and leave no crumbs—and then have them asking you for more. Because expertise information, industry insight, and highly credited consultation are all that was being served in the E-SUITE situated at the NOPSI hotel where business, beauty, and brains took center stage.
Unapologetically bold panelist, founder, and managing partner of 1863 Ventures, Melissa L. Bradley commanded the room all with a smile and an “it’s the Black joy for me shirt” neatly tucked under her blazer. Melissa took the entire room through a lesson involving numbers that painted the financial journey of their business outcomes. “Numbers are just the numerical and qualitative portions of your business strategy, OWN your numbers, do not outsource them,” Bradley said.
With an effortless way of engaging the audience in the perfect call and response method, Melissa proudly reminded the audience just in case we forgot, “business don’t move without the people.”
That statement on its own was enough to fill the room because we the people, aka the Black and Brown faces of both women AND men in business at all levels from start up to scale, couldn’t get enough of the raw and realness being delivered from the mouth of investor that looked back at those same Black and Brown faces and mirrored their own image. Language is everything," Bradley later added. "You are not the minority, you are the new majority in business!”
Want to see what it means to be Black, bold, and true to the numbers in business from an industry leader that is arming black founders with the processes and systems needed to succeed? Check out the full conversation in the video above. For more of everything you missed at the 2022 ESSENCE Festival of Culture, visit our official video content hub HERE.
