How You Take a Stand

Today, PayPal announced its largest ever investment in social impact (over $500 million). Perhaps more important than the landmark number though, is the process that was undertaken to arrive at the final outcome.

I am honored to have been part of the team that worked on this project. But, I am inspired by the fact that this program was guided by several black leaders at the company including Peggy Marie Alford, Julian King, Andrea Donkor, Janine Kamwene and Lisha Bell as well as so many external leaders in the community including Byna Elliott, Melissa Bradley, Natalie Madeira Cofield, Rodney Sampson,Saafir Rabb II, Fagan Harris, Ron Busby, Dr. Michael McAfee, Mekaelia Davis, JaNay Queen Nazaire , PhD, and Tawanna Black. I especially want to acknowledge Connie Evans, and your amazing team Corey Briscoe, M.S., Nou Vang, and Hyacinth V. at the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) for your incredible collaboration and guidance. The small business grant program was co-created in complete partnership with AEO. The team at AEO helped to guide us to understand the challenges that currently exist for black-owned micro-businesses and how to design a grant program that would be meaningful, thoughtful, and impactful.

There has also been incredible work done on this project by allies internally and externally who deserve recognition including Clam Lorenz, Julie Vennewitz-Pierce, Karen Little, Jeff Levine, Doug Brand, Bernardo Martinez, Art Stevens, Tammy Halevy, Josh Criscoe, Tyler Spalding, Amanda Miller, Amanda Coffee, Amanda Schwartz, Zoulfia Moret, Paul Disselkoen, Ivy K. Lau, Julie Vennewitz-Pierce, and Bernardo Martinez. And, I want too give a very special acknowledgment to Franz Paasche who first of all brought me into the project, but also architected this entire effort and served as its executive ally. Having someone at the top of an organization that is willing to push hard for these kinds of large scale changes is more important than ever and Franz exemplified that kind of leadership in creating this program. I am very grateful to work for a leader like Franz. All of these folks helped us stand up a program that is uniquely PayPal in that it is customer-centric and is targeted at a massive socio-economic challenge.

The racial wealth gap in the U.S. is as wide as it was in 1968. (Source: Washington Post). And, business ownership is key to wealth creation. Unfortunately, Black businesses have been historically under-capitalized and under-supported. Nationally, people of color represent about 40% of the population, but only 20% of the nation’s 5.6 million business owners with employees. (Brookings). The impacts of COVID were also disproportionately felt by black businesses.

• Black owned businesses were the hardest hit by COVID. About 41% of black owned businesses closed between Feb and April, whereas the average for the country was just 22%. Latinx business owners fell by 32%. Immigrant business owners experienced substantial losses of 36%. (NBER paper)

Short-term grants are needed to help the smallest of businesses pull through the current challenge. But, long-term investment is going to be essential to getting at the deeper challenge of the racial wealth gap. Our program is an attempt to contribute in both of these spaces.

Finally, this work has been a very personally educational for me. One of the first pieces I read when I started working on this project was Urban Institute's report on Structural Racism.

The first recommendation in the report is closing the racial wealth gap. The program we announced today will hopefully be a very small part of helping with that. The Urban Institute report also contains an amazing quote:

“Racism never goes away, it just adapts."

— Jemar Tisby, author of  The Color of Compromise and president of The Witness, a Black Christian Collective

This investment is amazing, and the process by which we got to it is even more notable. But, we have to remain ever vigilant on this issue; it is not one that is going to be "solved". And, we all have to think about what we can do in our spheres of influence to try to get ahead of this constantly adapting challenge.

To end on a positive note, one of the biggest insights for me has been that the very physical and experiential differences that are at the root of this challenge are potentially also at the heart of the positive reaction that is needed here. In a very short term time frame working on this project, I have learned about acknowledging the differences that exists around us and that sometimes we are biased when engaging with someone different than we are. And, I am eternally hopeful that we can learn to respect those differences, and then maybe even embrace or even celebrate those differences.