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Scarlet by RedDrop Co-Founders Dana Roberts and Monica Williams are celebrating great success for their business, driven by a vision to support young girls navigating puberty. It all started with Robert’s time teaching fifth graders in an Atlanta classroom. She was approached by a student who had started her period and felt that she was dying, according to Yahoo! News. This would lead her to launch RedDrop, which was rebranded to Scarlet by RedDrop in 2025, alongside physician Williams, to serve tweens and teens. It offers pads, tampons, and period kits that include pads in various sizes, as well as a diary that shares helpful tips, according to its website. “RedDrop was our beginning, born from a desire to fill a gap in puberty care for school-age girls,” Williams told Inc. “But as we grew, we realized our name no longer held all that we were becoming. The rebrand reflects the company’s new educational period-care product line that supports tweens and teens at every stage of their...
Founder Piersten Gaines turned a white space in the market into a money-making business. The Harvard Business School (HBS) graduate noticed her friends traveling from Boston, MA, to other cities, such as New York and Houston, TX, forking over $250 for blowouts. Meanwhile, she spent only $45 at a dry bar and avoided the inconvenience of the travel costs. Gaines was convinced that there should be a solution out in the world to address this pain point for the textured hair community. She was determined to launch one, despite not having any prior experience in the industry, she said during a fireside chat held during an exclusive happy hour, hosted by Slauson & Co. and Black Women in Venture Capital, to kick off AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 in Houston. Pressed Roots It would be losing her mother to lymphoma during her second semester at HBS that reshaped her goals and inspired her to create Pressed Roots, Boston Voyager reports. Its formation was aided by Gaines’s hairstylist from the dry...
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones plans to open The North Star Books + Bar in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in 2026, according to its website. The literary space will occupy the former Macon Hardware store at the corner of Macon Street and Marcus Garvey Boulevard, a Black-owned business that closed in 2023, notes the Brownstoner. Hannah-Jones is partnering with local entrepreneurs Rotimi and Ayo Akinnuoye, the husband-and-wife team behind Bed-Stuy establishments Bed-Vyne Wine, Bed-Vyne Brew, and Bed-Vyne Cocktail, and DJ Johnson, owner of Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans, per The North Star Books + Bar’s website. The group will convert the two-story brick building into a bookstore and bar with community-focused programming. “I’m very plugged into the writer community, I’m friends with a lot of great writers, and I wanted to bring those writers into our community,” Hannah-Jones told Brownstoner. “Whenever you have big book events in the city, they’re not...
Chemist Ron Robinson is betting on the next generation of entrepreneurs. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, Robinson founded BeautyStat Cosmetics, a bootstrapped skincare company with product offerings including a triple- patented stable vitamin C, notes Beauty Matter. He also is a chemist and key formulator for Rhodes, a multi-category lifestyle beauty brand founded by actress Hailey Bieber. Elf Beauty acquired Rhodes for $1 billion earlier this year. “Proud day for science. Hailey, Michael @ratty Lauren @laurenratner and the entire @rhode team – Thank you for bringing us on as partners from the very beginning,” Robinson wrote on Instagram. “While some may have experts just for marketing, you truly leaned into the science and allowed us to be part of the team. Because of you, brands have taken notice and now value the need for science-led formulations. This has been the journey of a lifetime and we are proud to be a part of it.” Yes Day Robinson is now dedicating some of his time to...
LVHM is considering selling its stake in Fenty Beauty. Fenty Beauty And LVMH’s Involvement In 2017, Rihanna brought Fenty Beauty to market with Kendo Brands, LVMH’s in-house beauty incubator, according to CNBC. Ownership was split 50/50 between Rihanna and LVMH. Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, shared rave reviews of the Barbados-born music artist and entrepreneur in 2019. “Everybody knows Rihanna as a wonderful singer, but through our partnership at Fenty Beauty, I discovered a true entrepreneur, a real CEO and a terrific leader. She naturally finds her full place within LVMH,” Arnault said in a statement, according to CNN. Fenty Beauty’s Success Fenty Beauty launched with 40 shades of foundation, which catered to people of all skin tones. Its product offerings, including lip gloss, all-over highlighter, plumping primer, and hair and skincare, continue to be a home run for consumers. In fact, the company made $450 million in net sales last year and has a valuation that...
Karima Williams is behind an AI-powered web platform that can be used for your biggest crash outs. The Howard University graduate from Prince George’s County, Maryland, started teaching people how to use technology while working for Obamacare. She later moved into IT after Trump was elected, and got into crypto through her work in the private sector, with a seven-year streak with startups until she was laid off. “I started off with me teaching crypto basics like safety, wallets, yields … Then it branched into me teaching about AI and AI agents because I was learning about them as I was teaching,” she told AFROTECH™. “And by the time I got let go from my company, I was more so full into the AI part of it, and I continued to teach AI and live stream,” Williams added. Williams went down a rabbit hole of AI tools, including Lovable, a no-code AI builder, and Claude, an AI-powered assistant that she began using heavily in October 2024. She calls Claude her “AI bestie,” and it served as a...
Omi Bell says entrepreneurship was her way out of poverty. While on the “Black Tech Green Money” podcast hosted by AFROTECH™ Brand Manager Will Lucas, Bell shared how selling t-shirts changed her circumstances for the better. She was a computer scientist who had great jobs and grew up mainly in the middle class. However, she had her first child at 17 and her second child at 21, which led her to live in Section 8 housing and accept government assistance. She was working as a teacher and was supporting her children through school. “America’s not built for a person, a single person with children. That’s just the reality,” she said on the podcast. “But I had good jobs. I was a K-12 educator. I worked at a patent and trademark office … but I still couldn’t afford to live. Entrepreneurship was really my way out. I had gotten laid off twice. Me and my fiancé broke up. I realized I’m not going to get married. Now I have three children, and I’m not going to go back to anywhere where anybody...
Mykel B. Davis is connecting with women from all stages of motherhood. Muscle Up Mommy When the journalist and Detroit native, who now resides in Houston, gave birth to twin girls in November 2015, she was “completely thrown into the mix” with no blueprint in sight. She defaulted to superwoman mode, trying to balance all her responsibilities without asking for help, and went into a postpartum depression spiral. “‘Who said that you had to be all the things? Who said that you would be weak if you asked for help?’ And once I asked myself those hard questions, that’s when I said, ‘You know what? I’m gonna go to social media, see if there are other women who are experiencing the same things as me,'” she recalled to AFROTECH™. “And when I did that, I had a slew of moms who were like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been wanting to talk about this. I had nobody in my immediate circle that I could talk to other than family and friends.’ That comes with a little bit of a bias. So we created a community of...
The bankruptcy case for Houston’s Turkey Leg Hut has officially ended, leaving more than $6.5 million in debt unpaid, according to the Houston Chronicle. The outlet notes court records show that the Chapter 7 trustee Ronald J. Sommers, who was overseeing the case, confirmed all accounts are empty, and no assets remain to satisfy creditors. Sommers noted in his report that there were insufficient assets to administer, and all financial records had been submitted to the U.S. Trustee. “The bank statements reflect a final zero balance, and no other funds or assets of the estate remain in my custody,” he wrote, according to the Houston Chronicle. Founded in 2015 in Houston’s Third Ward, Turkey Leg Hut became known for its stuffed turkey legs, quickly drawing long lines and celebrity visits, the Houston Chronicle reported in a separate article. The restaurant began in a parking lot near the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, founded by Nakia Holmes and her then-husband, Lyndell Price. Over...
Black women continue to plant their flags in technology. University of Michigan graduate Crystal Brown stumbled into technology after a friend introduced her to a CEO behind a life science startup, TechCrunch reports. She was already nose deep in the automotive manufacturing industry and aiming to become a C-suite automotive executive. The CEO that she had been introduced to was looking for a business manager, and Brown accepted a part-time role. Her friends encouraged her to leave her position in the automotive industry altogether. “I was like, no one’s gonna take me seriously. I’ve never studied biology. I studied poli sci and women’s studies,” she told TechCrunch. Brown stayed with the company and eventually moved up to director of operations. Then the startup went public. With a substantial payout, she decided to launch her own biotech startup, per the outlet. Though she made some rookie mistakes, like hiring too quickly, and the company ultimately closed due to funding, she had...
Rihanna’s impact on the beauty world continues to grow, and now it’s earned a place in history. Time Magazine has named the billionaire’s Fenty Beauty Foundation to its 2025 Best Inventions Hall of Fame list. View this post on Instagram A post shared by FENTY BEAUTY BY RIHANNA (@fentybeauty) Since debuting in 2017, Fenty Beauty’s Foundation has been credited with helping to reshape the cosmetics industry. At a time when many makeup brands offered only a narrow selection of tones, Fenty Beauty launched with 40 shades, giving people with deeper complexions more options that matched their skin. Time noted that the foundation “set a new standard for the industry” and inspired other companies to expand their offerings. “Makeup is like a secret weapon. It can go from very subtle to a complete transformation,” Rihanna told Time in a 2017 interview. She said it was “important that every woman felt included” and added that she was fully involved in the product’s development, working...
SKIMS co-founder Emma Grede has lent her expertise to a wellness venture launched by Hoda Kotb. Leaving ‘Today’ Kotb, a Virginia Tech University graduate with a degree in broadcast journalism, had been a host on the “Today” show since 2007, ultimately becoming co-anchor. She left many in shock when she departed the show on Jan. 10 after turning 60, according to NPR reports. She shared that the decision resulted from reaching a peak on television and wanting to have more time for her family. Joy 101 Kotb has now turned to entrepreneurship, serving as the founder and CEO of Joy 101, a wellness company that offers intimate retreats and happiness hours with live conversations held on Zoom between Kotb, guests, and experts, according to its website. The company also launched an app with a daily joy plan backed by research tools and led by experts, with courses that center on various topics such as self-love and acceptance, mental health, reclaiming joy, and calming anxiety. PC: Joy 101...
Founder Elizabeth Abunaw believes a good business should solve a problem, so she launched the Chicago grocery store Forty Acres Fresh Market, the Chicago Tribune reports. Its inception dates back to 2016. While on a walk to get some cash, Abunaw was unsuccessful because there was no nearby bank or grocery store in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. “That’s when the ‘wheel started to turn’ — something that I thought would be simple, wasn’t simple. What is this?” Abunaw explained to the Chicago Tribune. “When I live in these predominantly white areas, I can find whatever I want, but now in a Black neighborhood, I can’t? It’s just harder,” she continued. Forty Acres Fresh Market After being laid off from from her job at Microsoft a few months later, Abunaw discovered a new purpose inspired by her 2016 experience. This led to the launch of a fresh produce pop-up market on Jan. 20, 2018, with a mission that “every hood should be healthy.” “We have not looked back since,” she said in a...
Neshe’ Conley is using AI to improve health outcomes for Black women. The Philadelphia native was raised by a teenage mother, and, as she grew older, she realized that she no longer wanted to live in the city due to its “culture of violence and poverty,” she told AFROTECH™ . She also wanted to improve disparities for others, which led her to Spelman College, where she earned a bachelor of science in 2013, initially aspiring to become a cardiothoracic plastic surgeon. However, her career trajectory shifted two weeks after graduating, following her grandmother’s passing. “She was financially supporting my mom … since my mom was a single mother,” Conley explained. “So I put a pause on going to medical school and just really started to work in the healthcare space,” she added. The Pivot Conley began working in healthcare administration at a trauma center, behavioral health emergency room, and labor and delivery unit. While speaking with patients, she observed a disconnect between the...
A search for a creative outlet led Naimah Belin to the floral industry. The Milwaukee, WI, native — the youngest among her four siblings — was raised in a single-parent household. She told AFROTECH™ she grew up with a creative spirit and was an avid reader. Later in life, she still wanted to maintain a creative outlet beyond her 9-to-5, even as a senior sales professional in tech or as a strategic customer success manager. Project 1952 As part of her creative pursuits, Belin explored blogging and thrifting but did not find fulfillment until becoming a certified florist in 2022. The following year, she launched Project 1952, a self-funded, Chicago-based floral business dedicated to her mother, Virginia. Since its inception, Project 1952 has partnered with the Emmys and the NBA All-Star events. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Chicago Florist & Creative Director (@project.1952) “I’m still in sales tech within the video industry, and it can be very Black and white, cut and...
