Madam C.J. Walker did not wait. The first self-made female millionaire in American history — born to formerly enslaved parents in Louisiana in 1867, orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, widowed at twenty — looked at a country that offered her almost nothing and decided to build something anyway. She built a haircare empire. She built a factory. She built a national network of sales agents, most of them Black women, who she equipped with both product and economic opportunity. She said: “I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.”
More than a century later, Black women across the DMV are living that philosophy at a scale that would astonish even Walker. They are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the United States. They are building IT firms in Waldorf, Maryland and wine subscription businesses that challenge the entire dynamics of a historically white industry. They are running salons in Prince George’s County that have become community institutions. They are launching consulting firms, healthcare practices, event companies, tech startups, and media brands — often simultaneously holding down full-time jobs, raising children, and supporting extended family.
This blog is a celebration of what Black women entrepreneurs in the DMV are building — and an honest account of what they are building it against.
The Numbers Are Extraordinary — and Still Not Getting Enough Attention
Black women make up less than ten percent of the U.S. population. They have emerged as the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the country.
According to the 2024 Wells Fargo Impact of Women-Owned Businesses report, Black women-owned businesses represent approximately 2.1 million enterprises — 52.1 percent of all Black-owned businesses in the United States. Between 2017 and 2020 alone, the number of Black women-owned businesses increased by nearly 20 percent, far exceeding the growth of women-owned businesses and Black-owned businesses overall. Then the pandemic hit — and rather than slowing that momentum, it accelerated it. Black women-owned businesses saw revenues surge 32.7 percent between 2019 and 2023, compared to 12.1 percent growth for all women-owned businesses during the same period.
The 2025 Wells Fargo report confirmed that Black women-owned businesses are now a key engine of economic growth in the U.S., overseeing 2 million businesses that collectively employ more than 647,000 people. A Goldman Sachs survey released in May 2024 found that six in ten Black women view entrepreneurship as an important pathway to wealth creation — and that with fewer barriers, even more would start businesses to support themselves, their families, and their communities.
In 2025 specifically, as federal DEI rollbacks eliminated chief diversity officer positions and left many Black women in corporate diversity roles suddenly jobless, a significant number responded by launching businesses. “What we find that Black women do is that they leave and start their own businesses,” said Mary-Frances Winters, author of Black Fatigue and an equity expert. The pattern is consistent: when corporate America closes a door, Black women build their own.
The DMV’s Black Women Entrepreneurs — Building Community Through Business
The DMV region has a particular concentration of Black women entrepreneur energy — driven by the presence of HBCUs, federal employment, a large and educated Black professional class, and a community that has always understood that economic self-determination is inseparable from community power.
Tamika Chance of Waldorf, Maryland built T12 Technologies — an IT support firm — and grew it by learning to market herself more effectively, eventually winning new government contracts. “As a woman entrepreneur, it’s very difficult to have people speak to you and sometimes take you seriously in the services that you do,” Chance acknowledged. But she kept building anyway.
Sherelle Holder, originally from Tobago, leads Karibbean Kinks — a premier salon in Prince George’s County, Maryland that has become far more than a hair business. It is a community space, a cultural anchor, and a place where the DMV’s Caribbean Diaspora community finds both excellent service and genuine belonging. “A simple beauty service can uplift the spirit,” Holder has said — and the community that has formed around her salon demonstrates exactly that.
Aja Nelson opened Salon Journey at the height of the 2020 pandemic — a daring move at a moment of maximum uncertainty. Within its first year, the company scaled to multiple six figures. The salon’s in-house initiatives extend beyond styling into events, philanthropy, and community programs. Nelson’s approach has been recognized as reviving the cultivation of community at the Black hair salon — honoring a tradition in which the Black hair salon has always been as much community gathering place as beauty destination.
Christi Hairston built CARRA Hosiery — a fashion brand that emerged from grief and love, founded in memory of her late sister Carra Lavonne. Every product pays tribute to her sister’s impeccable style. Founded in sorrow and built with purpose, CARRA Hosiery is a business that carries meaning beyond commerce.
These stories share something important: they are not primarily about individual ambition. They are about community. Black women entrepreneurs in the DMV build businesses with their communities in mind — creating jobs, building gathering places, meeting needs that were not being met, and putting economic resources back into the communities they serve. The business is the vehicle. The community is the destination.
Turning Corporate Exclusion Into Entrepreneurial Power
One of the most consistent threads running through the stories of Black women entrepreneurs — in the DMV and nationally — is that corporate America’s failure to fully value, promote, and retain Black women talent has been, paradoxically, one of the most powerful drivers of Black women’s entrepreneurship.
“I could only stay in corporate for ten years,” Mary-Frances Winters told the AFRO American Newspapers. “The microaggressions, the discrimination that I faced — when people see a Black woman, the assumption is you’re not as good, you’re not as smart, and you have to be twice as good.” That exhaustion — the constant proving, the constant navigating, the constant performing of competence for audiences who start from assumption of its absence — has driven wave after wave of talented Black women out of corporate settings and into business ownership.
The pattern is documented. The motivations are clear. And the result has been a generation of Black women who took the skills, networks, and expertise they built in corporate environments and applied them to building something they actually own.
In the wine industry — one of the most historically white and male-dominated sectors in American business — Pamela Frelow launched The Wine Concierge, an online wine store and subscription-based wine club, in December 2020, leaving her full-time job to run it exclusively in 2021. Her mission: supporting sommeliers, farmers, and winemakers of color in an industry where less than one percent of U.S. wineries are Black-owned. “When I go to industry events, I’m still one of the few Black people or women in the room,” Frelow acknowledged. “And if I bring one of my team members who is not a Black woman with me, people will defer to them as if they’re the owner of the company, not me.” She keeps going anyway. She builds anyway.
“To me, the rise of Black women entrepreneurs means we’re starting to believe in ourselves more,” said Joy Ofodu, who left her job at Instagram to build her own platform. “We’re finally recognizing how limitless we are.” That belief — hard-won, culturally specific, and increasingly shared across a generation — is reshaping what Black women’s economic power looks like in the DMV and across the country.
The BOW Collective and the Power of Community Capital
One of the most compelling organizational expressions of Black women’s entrepreneurial power in the DMV is The BOW Collective — Black Outstanding Women — founded by attorney Nicole Cober Johnson with a specific and audacious mission: to displace the narrative that Black women-owned businesses only generate an average of $24,000 in revenue.
The BOW Collective has built a membership of more than 300 women nationally — all with annual revenues exceeding one million dollars — for a collective annual revenue of over 1.7 billion dollars. The businesses represented in the collective span medical and dental practices, construction, hospitality, consulting, legal services, and beyond. The collective demonstrates, in concrete financial terms, what becomes possible when Black women entrepreneurs are properly resourced, networked, and supported.
Denise Rolark Barnes — publisher of The Washington Informer and a BOW Collective member — described the power of the organization this way: “I am honored to be a member of The BOW Collective, a group of Black Women Entrepreneurs who are committed to working together to break barriers.” She noted that through the collective, she has met women running businesses across an astonishing range of industries. “We know that it is through the creation of jobs and businesses that we build communities. We know that small business is the economic engine of this country — and we are not on the sidelines watching things happen, but making things happen.”
The BOW Collective embodies a principle that the most successful Black women entrepreneurs in the DMV share: building collectively is more powerful than building alone. The networks, referrals, mentorship, and shared resources that emerge from communities of Black women business owners multiply the impact of every individual member.
The Real Barriers — An Honest Account of What Black Women Business Owners Are Up Against
The growth statistics are extraordinary. They are also happening in the face of barriers that are equally extraordinary — and naming them honestly is part of supporting the community of Black women entrepreneurs in the DMV.
Access to capital remains the most persistent and documented barrier:
While Black women are more likely to earn less, receive less financing, and have smaller networks to rely on than their white counterparts, a Goldman Sachs survey found that 63 percent of Black women think the federal government could do more to advance entrepreneurship opportunities. Currently, just 35 percent of Black women who own businesses feel their interests are well represented in Washington. The capital gap between Black women-owned businesses and comparable white-owned businesses is documented, persistent, and consequential.
The credibility tax:
Pamela Frelow’s experience — people deferring to her non-Black team members as if they were the business owner — is not unusual. Black women entrepreneurs consistently report being underestimated in professional settings, having to prove their expertise repeatedly to audiences that would not require the same proof from a white male peer. This credibility tax costs time, energy, and opportunity.
The multiple burden:
Black women entrepreneurs often carry responsibilities that their white peers are less likely to bear simultaneously: supporting extended family members financially, managing the mental health weight of racial stress, navigating the “strong Black woman” expectation that leaves little room for rest or failure. “Black women in general are fatigued,” Mary-Frances Winters said directly. “We are tired of having to continually defend and prove ourselves.” That fatigue is real — and the businesses Black women build despite it are even more extraordinary when this context is fully understood.
These barriers are not reasons Black women are not succeeding. They are reasons the success that Black women are achieving is even more remarkable than the numbers alone suggest.
How to Support Black Women Entrepreneurs in the DMV — Right Now
Support is not just a word. Here is what it looks like in practice:
- Spend money at Black women-owned businesses — restaurants, salons, event companies, IT firms, consulting practices, law offices, healthcare providers, bakeries, fashion boutiques. Your spending is the most direct form of support available
- Write reviews — a five-star Google or Yelp review for a Black woman-owned business is free, takes three minutes, and has real commercial impact on her visibility and client acquisition
- Refer clients and colleagues — word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing available to a small business. When you have a great experience with a Black woman entrepreneur, tell people specifically
- Hire Black women-owned businesses for contracts — if your organization procures services, advocate for Black women-owned vendors to be included in the consideration set
- Invest in Black women-led funds and organizations — the BOW Collective, Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women, and local giving circles specifically serving Black women entrepreneurs all amplify the community’s economic power
- Mentor younger Black women entrepreneurs — if you have built something, turn around. The most valuable thing an established Black woman entrepreneur can give the next one is her time, her network, and her honest guidance
- Support policy advocacy — 63 percent of Black women think government could do more for Black women entrepreneurs. Civic engagement on small business funding, contract equity, and access to capital translates directly into economic outcomes for this community
Resources for Black Women Entrepreneurs in the DMV
For Black women building businesses in the DMV right now, these resources are worth knowing:
- The BOW Collective (thebowcollective.com) — community, network, and resources for Black women entrepreneurs with a revenue focus on scaling to seven figures and beyond
- Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women — a $10 billion investment commitment with $100 million in philanthropic capital specifically supporting Black women entrepreneurs through 2030. Their OMBW: Black in Business program provides direct support
- Wells Fargo Milestone Circles — a free mentoring program for women entrepreneurs with strong representation of Black and Afro-Caribbean women business owners. Connect to More program provides peer networks and resources
- SBA Women’s Business Centers in the DMV — the U.S. Small Business Administration operates Women’s Business Centers across Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. providing free and low-cost business consulting, training, and referrals to financing
- The Washington Informer’s business coverage — consistently features Black women entrepreneurs in the DMV and provides community visibility for emerging businesses
- National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) DC Metro chapter — networking, advocacy, and business development resources for women business owners across the region
- Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) in the DMV — mission-driven lenders specifically serving underserved business owners including Black women. Harbor Bank of Maryland is one regional example. CDFIs offer business loans at fair rates to entrepreneurs who face barriers at traditional banks
They Are Not Waiting — And Neither Should You
Madam C.J. Walker did not wait. The Black women building businesses across the DMV in 2025 — from Waldorf IT firms to Prince George’s County salons to D.C. wine subscription services — are not waiting either. They are building in the face of capital gaps, credibility deficits, systemic exclusion, and the exhaustion of carrying multiple burdens simultaneously. They are building because the corporate world did not fully value them. They are building because their communities need what they have to offer. They are building because, as Madam Walker understood, the opportunity does not come to you — you build it.
For Black women in the DMV who are considering starting something of their own — this is your moment. The resources exist. The community exists. The proof that it is possible exists in the 2.1 million businesses that Black women are running right now across this country.
For everyone else in the DMV — spend your money deliberately, write the review, make the referral, and understand that every dollar you put into a Black woman-owned business is a dollar building community, closing the wealth gap, and proving that the most extraordinary entrepreneurs in this region are already here, already building, and deserve to be seen.
