Aurora James proudly lives between two worlds—altruism and capitalism.
The universes intersected in a post on her Instagram in 2020 calling major retailers to support Black businesses following the brutal killing of George Floyd and subsequent social justice uprising leaving many corporations asking what they can do to show solidarity with the Black community.
“I am asking you to commit to buying 15% of your products from Black owned businesses,” James wrote. “So many of your businesses are built on Black spending power. So many of your stores are set up in Black communities. So many of your sponsored posts are seen on Black feeds. This is the least you can do for us. We represent 15% of the population and we need to represent 15% of your shelf space.”
Not only did the companies answer the call, they sounded the alarm to other brand partners for support, prompting James to found the Fifteen Percent Pledge (FPP) nonprofit. Now, it is poised to Forbes “shift over $14 billion to Black entrepreneurs and businesses.” Thanks to FPP, more than 625 Black-owned businesses have been supported by the 29 pledge-taking companies including Nordstrom, Macy’s and Sephora.
But that isn’t enough for James—she’s raising the bar once again.
She recently announced the launch of the Friends and Family Collective to ensure Black founders have the resources and support they require to adequately fund and scale their brands.
The Collective, under the leadership of James and Alisa Williams, a partner at the private equity firm VMG Partners, has already invested $25 million in brands like Ghetto Gastro, Beauty Stat, Melanin Hair Care, Proudly, and Danessa Myricks, according to a statement shared with ESSENCE. The partnership aims to tap into an $850-million fund specifically earmarked for Black business bolstering. And it was all birthed from good old fashioned authenticity.
“Alisa emailed me a couple of days after I posted the idea of the pledge and told me to let her know if there’s ever anything that she can do,” James tells ESSENCE. “And it was very fascinating to me because as soon as I launched the pledge, there were a number of different venture capital and private equity firms that reached out, and a lot of them spent a lot of time telling me about the commitments they’d made. But what I thought was really disheartening was that when I asked to see the investments that they had made historically in Black-owned businesses, most of them really had nothing to share.”
James continued: “With VMG specifically and the work that Alisa has done, they’ve always been really in the forefront of thinking about lots of different founders and lots of different ideas and how to get a better product assortment onto the shelves of retailers across the country. And I think for me, I’m really in the intersection between altruism and capitalism. I think that you can do the right thing and have it be a really incredible business. And finding groups of people who truly believe that and aren’t just making commitments and not following through is really part of my passion in the world.”