“Our systems are poorly designed. They harm communities of color and limit our collective potential to thrive.”
The WEPOWER team is direct with their language on their website and at speaking events. They need to be. They are based in St. Louis, a city that faces cavernous racial disparities around wealth, health outcomes, education access, and treatment by the justice system.
Keisha Mabry Haymore, founder of WEPOWER, believes that the answer to these gaps is to redesign the systems that are currently failing people of color – to rethink the city’s education, economic, health, and justice systems to be more just and equitable. Critically, these systems need to be redesigned with people from marginalized groups.
“Today, only people with power get to design systems,” Keisha says. “Communities of color are isolated from the tables and spaces where decisions are made and ideas are created. Decisions are done to communities of color instead of imagined, created, and implemented with and by them.”
This is why Keisha wants to build WEPOWER’s Elevate/Elevar Accelerator into a hub for shifting power in Black and Latinx communities. She’s doing it for and with her community — and for her young daughter, who she wants to see grow up in a more equitable world.
Creating spaces for inclusion
Keisha learned how to be an entrepreneur from her mother, a single mom who always had two jobs, plus a side hustle. She kept the lights on by selling Mary Kay, art and candy to family, strangers and friends.
Keisha got her MBA in entrepreneurship in Kentucky, and since then, her career has had a common theme: helping communities of color realize their potential and power.
Keisha experimented with the power of technology to empower people with opportunity. After working at Teach for America, she was hired by the nonprofit College Bound to launch a tech tool called Bridgit, which helps students navigate college enrollment in the summer after high school graduation, when many students typically drop out in what’s called the “summer melt.” Keisha helped organize more than 50 tech-based tasks for students to take advantage of, from enrolling in classes to submitting transcripts. Through her efforts, she signed up 10,000 users in three months.
She even tried the corporate world working for a time at Dot Foods, where she created programming to support new hires and advanced inclusivity through a diversity-focused food club that still exists today.
“The company had just started bringing on more women and BIPOC, but didn’t know how to create spaces of inclusion,” she says. “The food club was a way for diverse employees to connect without feeling awkward or weird.”
By early 2020, Keisha was open to something new. She met up with an old friend from Teach for America, Charli Cooksey, who had recently launched a nonprofit in St. Louis dedicated to building wealth and power for communities of color. She called it WEPOWER, and she asked Keisha to join and direct a local accelerator for Black and Latinx founders.
Naturally, the accelerator was a fit, drawing on Keisha’s experiences in both education and business, and it directly challenged power dynamics while supporting founders of color.
Building a Community in St. Louis
WEPOWER was founded in 2018 as a vehicle to “activate” power in St. Louis’s communities of color. Their offerings include the Power Building Academy, a seven-month training program to help community members become local activists, and the Tomorrow Builders Fellowship.
Then there’s the accelerator. Its name is always written in two languages: Elevate/Elevar. Its mission is to provide coaching, connections, capital, and capacity-building resources to Black and Latinx entrepreneurs in St. Louis.
Keisha’s goal for the accelerator is to open up doors and networks for entrepreneurs who would otherwise be shut out.
“St. Louis can be a hard city for an entrepreneur if you’re not connected,” she says. “The most common question people ask is ‘What high school did you go to?’”
The accelerator is complemented by two additional offerings that benefit WEPOWER’s entrepreneurs: A program with Kiva to offer 0% interest loans up to $15,000, and access to Elevate/Elevar Capital, a founder-friendly investment capital fund that injects up to $200,000 in growing St. Louis companies.
It also bakes in an element of self-determination that fits WEPOWER’s community-centric model. WEPOWER uses an adaptation of Village Capital’s peer-selected investment model, which gives entrepreneurs a voice in who gets funding.
“We incorporate peer-to-peer feedback into weekly workshops,” Keisha says. “The founders rank each other on things like team and value proposition. We believe entrepreneurs can learn best from each other.”
As WEPOWER finishes up the accelerator’s second cohort, the goal is that the top two peer-ranked companies get considered for investment.
What’s Next for WEPOWER
WEPOWER’s accelerator, Elevate/Elevar, launched applications for their first cohort at the end of 2019, and more than 100 entrepreneurs applied and ten were accepted. Alumni have done interesting things. One alumna, Tiffany Wesley, converted her business to a worker-ownership model and a white label model that helps other businesses use her facilities. Another, Tiffany Jones, custom blends herbs and oils that are used for aromatherapy and plant-based medicine around the country.
“I want this city to be equitable for people who look like my baby and me,” Keisha says. “This city has embraced me, and I don't take that lightly. Wealth generation should be available to all.”
Keisha knows that it’s never too late for a person, or a community to thrive. Her mother, after dealing with homelessness and years of working two jobs, earned her MBA at age 50. Keisha wants to instill that same work ethic in her daughter.
“I have been homeless before,” she says. “That will not be an option for my daughter. I want her on the path to have investments and financial security. I had to figure out a lot myself. I don’t want other people to have my same experience.”