2023 Black Innovation and Entrepreneurship, part three: Learning from leading Black innovators

Kayla Austin, founder and CEO of My Gun's Been Moved, is an award-winning activist, author, social entrepreneur, and inventor. She was recently nationally recognized as an AT&T Dream in Black Rising Future Maker. As an innovator, she created her first invention in the third grade and graduated to a patent-pending invention to combat gun violence. She has combined her social justice and Girl Scout efforts to receive the prestigious Gold Award. Kayla hosted several community forums with police officers, school officials, community leaders, and teens to cultivate conversations to promote gun safety. She is now on a mission to help other youth ignite their social justice passions by authoring a book and website called “How to be a Teen Advocate.” She is also the national spokesperson for the Shoot Film Not Guns initiative. She has received two Presidential Community Service awards. Kayla is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in film and TV and looks forward to becoming a creative social entrepreneur after graduation.

Courtney has spent nearly two decades building winning teams in tech marketing for global enterprises, small- to medium-sized businesses, and startups. She has held full profits and loss responsibility for marketing departments and budgets across five continents, and has amassed a handful of successful exits. 

Today she is the co-founder and COO of beauty-tech startup ShearShare. Prior to cofounding ShearShare, Courtney managed a boutique consulting firm, where she fast-tracked international sales and marketing success for brands such as Zendesk, Zenefits, and Qualtrics. Courtney has held leadership positions in both early-stage and late-stage tech organizations, including vice-president of marketing for Marketing Advocate, global director of Oracle’s digital marketing strategy and innovations group, and head of demand generation and Japan- and Asia-specific field marketing at RightNow Technologies. Her leadership in demand and revenue generation at RightNow was instrumental in the $1.45 billion acquisition of the company.

Courtney is a winner of two 2016 Killer Content Awards, and has been named a 2015 Direct Marketing News 40 Under 40 Honoree, a Top #Nifty50 Women in Tech on Twitter, and a Distinguished Young Alumna of the Year by Texas Military Institute. She was also a finalist for the 2013-2014 Dallas-Forth Worth (DFW) American Marketing Association Marketer of the Year Award.

Dr. Tye Caldwell is the Cofounder & CEO of ShearShare, the first on-demand salon and barbershop space rental app. Recognized as a tech visionary and industry pioneer, Dr. Caldwell has grown ShearShare to be the greatest engine of jobs and wealth creation for the beauty and barbering industry. By reimagining the future of work and providing a platform for the independent economy, Tye is enabling more than 1,000,000 licensed professionals to rent workspace by the day in cities all over the world, while salon and barbershop owners make money on their empty suites and stations.

Prior to creating ShearShare, also known as HAIRbnb, Tye owned and operated an award-winning salon in Dallas, Texas, which was the genesis behind ShearShare. He has worked in beauty for 30 years as a celebrity master barber-stylist, educator, and small business coach, offering his decades of industry knowledge as a proven roadmap.

Dr. Tye Caldwell is a licensed instructor and educator and received his Doctorate of Professional Barbering & Cosmetology from Miracle University. 

Adia Burriss Coleman is the Head of the Business Library located in the School of Business at Howard University. In this capacity, she also serves as the Manager of the Howard University Patent and Trademark Resource Center (HU PTRC), where she helps to disseminate patent and trademark information and to support the diverse intellectual property needs of the public. Adia has created value for small businesses, research and development firms, Howard University laboratories, and independent inventors, making the HU PTRC a rich, local resource.

Adia has a Master's in Information Management from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Art in History from Morgan State University. 

NaThanya Ferguson serves as the manager of the USPTO’s Office of Innovation Outreach, which focuses on outreach to independent inventors, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and underrepresented communities of innovators across America.

Ferguson joined the USPTO in 1989. During her 33-year tenure at the agency, she has worked as a contracting officer representative, lead patent analyst for the Patent Process Reengineering initiative, strategic planning project manager for the Office of the Commissioner for Patents, and project manager for the National Council for Expanding American Innovation.

Ferguson has received numerous awards, including a Department of Commerce Gold Medal in 2015 for her contribution to the innovative and collaborative implementation of the First Inventor to File statutory provisions of the America Invents Act, a Department of Commerce Distinguished Career Award in 2011 for continued outstanding service, and a Silver Medal Award in 1999 for her contribution to the development and implementation of the Patent Process Reengineering initiative.

Ferguson holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business and management from Johns Hopkins University and a Master’s Certificate in project management from Management Concepts and Regis University.

Dr. Mary K. Foster is a Professor of Management in the Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. She has a doctorate in management from Morgan State University, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, a Master of Science from Johns Hopkins University, and a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland. She has more than 10 years of academic experience and more than 20 years of business experience, including executive roles at GE, Mars, Inc., and Sylvan Learning, Inc. Her areas of expertise in the business world include innovation, marketing, and strategy. Her areas of expertise in the academic world include teams/team effectiveness, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and entrepreneurship education.

Dr. Johnny Graham is an award-winning entrepreneur and educator dedicated to helping Black entrepreneurs launch and scale their business ventures as a means for increasing wealth and expanding community impact. Dr. Graham has over a decade of education and organizational leadership experience in developing programming for entrepreneurs at varying levels and stages, and he currently serves as Associate & Regional Center Director of the Howard University and PNC National Center for Entrepreneurship. 

Since 2017, Dr. Graham has served as a Professor of Marketing at the Howard University School of Business. He also serves as the Co-Chair of HU Empower, an annual business pitch competition that provides student entrepreneurs with startup funding, and leads the Entrepreneurship Taskforce, a collection of faculty, staff, and student leaders throughout the university’s ecosystem.  

Dr. Graham is also the co-founder and board chairman of Our D.R.E.A.M. Foundation, a nonprofit organization which provides entrepreneurship programming, mentorship, and startup funding to youth in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. Since its start in 2015, the DREAM foundation has helped provide entrepreneurship education to over 200 Baltimore high school students through its cornerstone summer program, the Y.E.S. (Youth Entrepreneurship Startup) Program. 

Dr. Graham received his doctorate in Business Administration from the Temple University Fox School of Business. He received his Master of Business Administration and a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland-College Park Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Don Graves is the 19th Deputy Secretary of Commerce. He brings decades of experience in the private sector, government, and nonprofits to the Department of Commerce. Most recently, he served as Counselor to President Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign. Prior to that, Graves served as Executive Vice President and Head of Corporate Responsibility and Community Relations at KeyBank. In this role, Graves led KeyBank’s corporate responsibility team, including the bank’s $16.5 billion National Community Benefits Plan, the bank’s sustainability work, stakeholder engagement, and outreach, and oversaw the KeyBank Foundation and the First Niagara Foundation.  

See full biography.

LaKisha Greenwade is an award-winning innovator, tech ecosystem founder, Forbes Leadership Coach, and Harvard University guest lecturer. She is the Founder and CEO of Wearable Tech Ventures, a global ecosystem dedicated to the development and promotion of wearable technology with a focus on nontraditional founders. She leads the charge to support 100 wearable startups by 2030 led by underrepresented founders and has grown the Baltimore-based organization to have representation on four continents. In 2022, Wearable Tech Ventures hosted the world's largest wearables hackathon and introduced wearable technology to the national Black press. As host of the Wearable Takeover podcast, LaKisha highlights founders, innovators, and examples of disruptive tech that solves everyday problems.
 
After years of leading innovation efforts for Fortune 500 corporations and the federal government, Greenwade earned a Design Thinking certification from MIT. She received her Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Ohio State University, a Master of Business Administration from University of Maryland College Park, and a Master of Science in Marketing Education at Johns Hopkins University. 

Tiffany House works as a Commercialization Analyst in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. For the past four years, Tiffany has communicated with small business owners and provided them with the resources they need to develop their innovative technologies for the commercial sector. 

Ms. House has a knack for making meaningful connections and an insatiable appetite for helping organizations improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. In 2021, Tiffany was selected by the Women of Color STEM Conference to receive the Women of Color Technology Rising Star Award.  

Ms. House obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Central State University and her Master of Business Administration from Trinity University. 

Lonnie Johnson is a 2022 inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF). He is the inventor of the Super Soaker® water gun, which has generated several billion dollars in retail sales and remains a top-selling toy worldwide. Johnson has over 140 patents, with over 20 more pending, and has authored several publications on spacecraft power systems. 

Johnson holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering, a Master of Science degree in Nuclear Engineering, and honorary doctorates from Tuskegee University and the University of lndiana. He is a former U.S. Air Force Officer and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Engineer. His professional service includes leadership roles on some of our nation's most advanced technology systems, including the Stealth (B2) Bomber, NASA's Voyager Mission, Galileo Mission to Jupiter, the Cassini Mission to Saturn, and the Mars Observer project.

Presently, Johnson is the President and Founder of Johnson Research & Development Co., Inc. (JRD), a technology incubator. His current mission is to invent paradigm shift solutions to the world's sustainable energy and environmental challenges.

Passionate about financial inclusion, social impact, inclusive innovation, and equitable entrepreneurship, Erin Horne McKinney serves as the inaugural National Executive Director of the Howard University and PNC National Center for Entrepreneurship. The vision for the Center is to create a nationally recognized center for entrepreneurship education, research, resources, and advocacy for Black business owners across the country. 

McKinney is the Founder of the global community Black Female Founders. She is an award-winning serial entrepreneur and intrapreneur, seasoned executive, investor, Womanist, Afrofuturist, activist, advocate, and communication scientist with more than two decades of entrepreneurship and tech policy, venture capital, economic and business development, Inclusion/Diversity/Equity/Allyship (IDEA), and marketing communications experience. Erin is a member of Pipeline Angels and serves as an advisor and mentor to startups, incubators, and accelerator programs. She is a founding member of the Black Innovation Alliance (BIA) and serves as a Board Director for the Greater Twin Cities United Way, Tubman, and BIA. 

Dr. Oluwatope "Tope" Fashola Mitchell co-founded Fashola Mitchell Education Solutions, Inc. in 2010 with her spouse to provide educational resources to at-risk youth in San Bernardino County, California. She is currently the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Reflekt Me, which hyper-personalizes eCommerce sites to create inclusive communities directly on their product detail page. These communities enable brands to engage 100% of their digital buyers. Reflekt Me increases engagement, average order value, sales lift, and units per transaction for fashion and beauty brands. 

Dr. Mitchell has worked as a lifestyle and leisure analyst, associate head of multicultural insight, and as a business strategist at award-winning companies, including Mintel, Kantar Futures, and Three Group. She has taught business courses in entrepreneurial marketing, new venture creation, and business and society at the undergraduate and graduate level. She holds a doctorate, Master of Arts (Indiana University), and Bachelor of Arts (University of Washington) in sociology with an emphasis on social psychology and identity, along with a Master of Business Administration Certificate in general business from UNC – Fayetteville.

Judith Norman is a creative storyteller, serial entrepreneur, and advocate for ambitious women of color. Prior to StartHER TV, she created and produced digital lifestyle video content, e-books, e-courses, and in-person events for some of the largest brands in the $30 billion crafts and hobbies industry. She also owned and operated three craft subscription clubs (scrapbooking, crochet and sewing). 

Norman's audience always demanded to know the stories behind the creative women entrepreneurs featured in the content that she produced. She decided to create a company, StartHER TV, that combined her passion for visual storytelling and the market’s desire for inspiring authentic stories about fearless women banking on their bliss. 

As she began producing short-form web series, an audience of ambitious Black and brown women emerged to the forefront. They were primarily first-generation entrepreneurs looking for role models who looked like them and who had overcome the challenges that they were currently facing. It became her mission to support their journeys by providing authentic, high-quality, original, aspirational stories that spotlight Black and Brown women entrepreneurs’ creativity, resourcefulness, grit, hustle, style, and humanity. 

Angela Wilson is a Trademark Group Director at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), where she provides oversight and supervision to Trademark Law Offices. She began her career with USPTO in 1994 as a trademark examining attorney. She entered the management ranks in 2000, first as a senior attorney and then as a managing attorney. She entered the Senior Executive Service in 2018. Wilson also provides executive leadership in the areas of telework, leadership development, recruitment, and diversity and inclusion.  

Wilson received her Juris Doctor from the College of William and Mary, Marshall-Wythe School of Law. She earned her bachelor's degree in English Arts from Hampton University.