BIZ WHIZ Charity Marcus and Aszurdee Sade, co-founders of Black Women Business Owners of Tulsa
MEET AND GREET
Tulsa entrepreneurs launch Black Women Business Owners of Tulsa. BY BRIA BOLTON MOORE
“I
’m the only one. There’s just me.” Aszurdee Sade and Charity Marcus each said these words of their shared experience: being in a room full of people but being the only black female business owner. Sade is founder and CEO of Realty Stylist, a real estate company, and founder and CEO of the Fashion Cruiser, a mobile boutique. Marcus is the president and CEO of Avenu Consulting and CEO and senior publicist for Avenu PR. The duo started Black Women Business Owners of Tulsa in November with a mission to provide African American women entrepreneurs with the resources and connections needed to have a successful business. According to Black Women Business Startups, a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, “recent growth in the rate of business ownership by black women has been faster than any other group in the nation. From 2002-2012, the number of businesses owned by black women increased 179% compared with 52% for all womenowned businesses and 20% for all businesses.” The report details challenges many black women entrepreneurs face, like limited support
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systems, difficulty accessing credit and a lack of mentoring and business knowledge. “It was so interesting that after we really looked at the report, one of the solutions was to create ecosystems for black women entrepreneurs to get resources, and essentially, that’s what we’ve done here in Tulsa,” Marcus says. BWBOT has four levels of membership, ranging from free general membership to $250 annual business membership. “An entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down, but for black women entrepreneurs, we do it with only a toothpick and a napkin,” Sade says. TP
Black Women Business Owners of Tulsa will host a Women’s Business Expo from noon-6 p.m., Aug. 10, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Tulsa, 616 W. Seventh St. The expo will feature 40 businesses owned by local black women, free headshots for the first 25 guests, as well as speakers and panel discussions. Free and open to the public; $100-150 for black women entrepreneurs to be vendors. bwbotulsa.com
On the Day Center’s transition from “day shelter” and “night shelter” to “housing transition shelter”: We average 280-300 people coming into our day shelter on a daily basis. We average 115 people in our night shelter. We are becoming a “housing-focused shelter,” which means we engage our clients to work on getting housed as soon as possible. We have government and private funding called Rapid Rehousing that focuses on assisting people to overcome re-housing barriers. We assist with state IDs, birth certificates, bus tokens for work, employment interviews and medical appointments. Our free clinic triages anywhere from 30 to 40 clients daily for primary health care, and we averted over 350 EMSA calls. We also have a clothing room available to anyone who walks through our doors. On its 2019 capital campaign: We will start remodeling the Day Center this summer for better function with several needed upgrades. Additional space will be added for administrative purposes. We will still be open during the phases of construction. I’ve already begun looking at new programs to better assist our clientele. — JUDY LANGDON
BIZ WHIZ: ROBERT PERRY PHOTOGRAPHY; MEET AND GREET: GREG BOLLINGER
STRONGER TOGETHER
NAME: Mack Haltom AGE: 63 KNOWN AS: the new executive director of Tulsa Day Center for the Homeless, where he has worked for 20 years, first as a case manager and later as associate director. Haltom replaced Sandra Lewis in December when she retired.