12.9.22 Multi-Cultural i-Lab x Beauty & Essex
It was a rainy night in NYC, but we had another amazing group of founders and investors gathered at the Beauty and Essex.
We started the evening in the bar room, swapping stories from the fundraising road and current funding environment. After we welcomed everyone in to the dining room, we hosted Rachel ten Brink, founder of Red Bike Capital (RBC) to a 30-minute Q&A. RBC invests in early stage, high growth startups that drive the economy and improve people’s lives and is a Latinx and women led venture fund that invests in US based fintech, e-commerce enabled, SaaS, marketplaces, and health and wellness companies.
Our guests included start-ups from Morgan Stanley’s Multi Cultural Innovation Lab (MCIL) as well as Morgan Stanley’s Family Office Resources Group (Philanthropy), and many renowned HBS alumni and investors, both from NYC and afar.
After the panel, we had a 20-minute discussion and debate around which charitable programs our group was most interested in donating to. Such programs included 4 separate youth sports/education charities, and 2 reproductive rights organizations.
Figure Skating in Harlem received overwhelming support, which uses ice skating to help low-income girls, ages 6-18, develop into healthy and confident young women both on and off the ice. The agency operates out of the Riverbank Park sports complex in West Harlem and Chelsea Piers and its curriculum promotes academic success, physical health, and emotional well being; it has social workers on staff that help promote positive self-esteem and body image, and conflict resolution and other socioemotional skills. In addition to daily skating lessons and fitness conditioning, participants receive tutoring and attend science, technology, math, and communication classes. The program also provides girls with high school and college guidance, career workshops, and leadership and mentoring opportunities. Figure Skating in Harlem has an operating budget of ~$1.6M.
Additional programs that were discussed at dinner include the following: Kings County Tennis League (operating budget $419k), New Heights Youth (operating budget $1.7M), South Bronx United (operating budget $1.4M), Black Women’s Blueprint (operating budget ~ $1.38M), NY Abortion Access Fund (operating budget ~$314k). The idea is for the group to discuss, based off of experience, background, interest and passion which programs resonate the most and why. Guests are then invited to state their opinion and persuade others to also vote in favor of the program. These programs leverage, for example, basketball to help young people access educational support and opportunity, including SAT tutoring, service learning projects, workshops on teamwork and respect, and counseling to help stay on track for graduation. Other programs mentioned above serve young immigrants ages 4-18, most if not all from West and Central Africa, Mexico and Central and South America, helping find families that guide them to excel in school and on the soccer field. And yet, others were founded in Brooklyn in 2008, as grassroots organizations dedicated to racial and economic equity in health, particularly reproductive, centering on the lived experiences of BIPOC women and girls by providing educational workshops and intersectional training while also providing counseling for survivors of gender based violence.
We concluded the evening with our giving segment. Some discussed their willingness to help make connections, others discussed their recently published books, open fundraising rounds, and hiring needs. The Beauty and Essex was the perfect setting for an intimate dinner and for real professional and personal connections to be made.