Melissa Bradley on providing access to capital and mentorship to New Majority entrepreneurs

Innovators share ideas with WorkingNation Overheard at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2021
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1863 Ventures was created two years ago to support what founder and general partner Melissa Bradley calls the New Majority, Black and brown entrepreneurs who have historically faced barriers as they’ve tried to build and grow their companies.

WorkingNation sat down with Bradley at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2021 in Beverly Hills as part of our #WorkingNationOverheard interview series. With Charting a New Course as the guiding theme, thought leaders and innovators shared ideas about the changing economy, worker development, education, tech, philanthropy, and more.

1863 Ventures has its roots in a student-led project that Bradley headed in 2015 to help new businesses in southeast Washington DC. In just four years, it evolved into a national initiative that now has helped more than 2,500 early-stage and growth-stage founders across various industries, through business training, mentorship, and access to capital.

Bradley notes that the success of New Majority entrepreneurs is good for the community. “When entrepreneurs make money, they tend to reinvest in new companies. I know many entrepreneurs who’ve gone on to become angel investors or start venture capital funds because they want to reduce the friction that they experienced in the process.”

Women are real drivers in entrepreneurship, notes Bradley. “Recognizing that Black women are the fastest growing segment of entrepreneurs and Latinx businesses are the fastest growing businesses. We saw there was a gap in the market.” She says these business owners, in particular, are targets of the organization’s support.

“Entrepreneurship – as businesses grow – creates jobs, which is huge. You’re not only creating wealth for the individuals in the company, but you’re creating wealth in communities where you’re located. You’re creating wealth through employment, pension funds, and retirement funds. I think we see that there is a trickle down, or multiplier effect, when that happens. Particularly within communities of color, we find that entrepreneurs skew not just toward creating individual wealth, but really thinking about the community writ large.”

Bradley says the organization was named after the year of the Emancipation Proclamation. “The year signified the opportunity of freedom and, ideally, access to wealth, and the American Dream for former slaves. So, we continue to carry that on to signify that we are seeking changes in our current structures that have historically marginalized Black and brown entrepreneurs, and to make a shift as they serve as our great economic opportunity moving forward.”

Click here to learn more about 1863 Ventures.

Follow the conversation on social media: #WorkingNationOverheard #WorkingNation #MIGlobal 

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.