Professor’s Project Aims to Expand Entrepreneurial Opportunities and Equity in Once ‘Black Wall Streets of the South’ – VCU News

David Sliper
L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs

When Elsie Harper-Anderson, Ph.D. thinks about the economics of fair entrepreneurship, her focus goes beyond economic statistics on equality in urban labor markets. data — the intersection of everyday life experiences and entrepreneurial journeys. what is their daily life like? What are the unique factors that influence their success? What are their perceptions and concerns in the local business environment?

These questions lead Harper Anderson, an associate professor at VCU’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, down an uncharted path in an entrepreneurial unique focus on underrepresented minority business owners. are investigating issues. These entrepreneurs face statistically higher barriers to entry, lower sales, fewer employees, and disproportionately higher close rates than white entrepreneurs.

Catch the pulse of the entrepreneurial ecosystem

For Harper-Anderson, entrepreneurship can be a powerful and essential tool for reducing economic and social disparities. Yet intended social advancement is often weighed down by many pervasive factors that systematically perpetuate inequality. I’m interested in getting a better perspective on how things are shaping up.

“This research is critical to uncovering the mechanisms that create and perpetuate inequalities, incorporating input from many actors within the ecosystem.” I’m here. “We go beyond long-held assumptions by prioritizing the voice of entrepreneurs and elaborating on their real-world experience. It will shine a light and lead to informed policy and resource allocation decisions.”

Funded by the Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundation’s Community Engaged Entrepreneurship Grant, Harper Anderson is unlocking Richmond’s entrepreneurial ecosystem in line with the goals of the Wilder School Research Institute for Social Equity. She examines the intersection of race, ecosystems, social networks, and other variables and the impact of these factors on entrepreneurial success.

Capturing and Elevating the Voice of Entrepreneurs

Her survey participants were 40 entrepreneurs based in the Richmond area, with a diverse mix of 50% black, 35% white, and 10% Latino business owners. Through a weekly participant journal and her bimonthly interviews, she tracks each business owner through her year. Minority business owner responses are compared to those of white business owners to gain clearer insight into the access and inclusion gaps that influence each group’s decisions and outcomes.

Participants answer weekly questions about the strategies they employ to grow their business, the challenges and barriers they face, and personal life factors that affect their work, and rate their perception of success on a scale of 1 to 5. Rank in.

“Unlimited reflection allows us to go beyond the findings of most traditional entrepreneurial studies,” she said. “Entrepreneurial reflection can pick up on patterns and nuances that might otherwise be lost in translation. Already revealing something specific to the political, geographical and political space.”

Harper-Anderson and her team will compile the findings and share them with participants at six-month intervals. Survey participants will also have the opportunity to share their views on emerging topics and help develop interview questions for other key stakeholders in the ecosystem.

“Economic development scholars and practitioners have embraced ecosystem frameworks to consider how actors, institutions, policies and cultures work together to create the environments in which entrepreneurs operate,” Harper said. Anderson says. “A holistic look at the entrepreneurial landscape and how they navigate it helps identify key opportunities to influence policy interventions.”

An Informed Future for Entrepreneurial Policy Making

The larger purpose of this research is to create a strong case for investment today and in the future, helping disadvantaged entrepreneurs in Richmond and elsewhere. Harper-Anderson wants to inform policy makers by connecting on an individual level, not just numbers.

Combining first-hand experience with macroeconomic data is a new approach that can help open ears and galvanize action to help remove barriers for entrepreneurs. Richmond’s Jackson Borough was once the most prosperous in the country Home to one of the black communities, “Black Wall Street,” it suffered decades of racist and systematic eviction and destruction.

The 2008 financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic further ripped the economic capital of Black and Latinx business owners apart. Harper-Anderson’s previous research confirms that the hardships of the economic crisis disproportionately affect minority groups, and that legislation aimed at recovery has less impact on these groups.

Her early findings on the impact of the pandemic on black business owners will be published in her next edited book, “Racial Equity, COVID, and Public Policy: The Triple Pandemic. PhDs Harper Anderson and Nathan Techremariam, with a PhD in Public Policy and Administration from the Wilder School, explains how it is difficult for black businesses to access funds from the Paycheck Protection Program funds through the CARES Act because of the way the law is written. In many cases, pre-existing systemic inequalities in banking relationships have dictated the distribution of funds.The findings of this study were published in Harper Anderson’s COVID-19 Rapid Research Funding Opportunity Opportunity in 2020. It arose from a project funded by VCU’s Office of the Vice President of Research and Innovation and the C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research.

Today, more than half of Richmond’s population is black (44.8%) or Hispanic (7%), but only 11% of entrepreneurs are minorities, according to US Census data. Additionally, the city’s poverty rate is currently 25%.

“Richmond occupies a unique place in the economic history of black Americans,” said Harper Anderson. “As the former home of the Confederacy and the Black Wall Streets of the South, the city lies on both sides of the black economic pendulum, leading to an embedded structure of systemic inequality alongside deep-rooted black entrepreneurship. increase.”