Annual Report 2022

Letter From Our

President & CEO   

Fay Horwitt, Forward Cities President & CEO

This past year was pivotal for our country and our organization’s journey. As a result of heightened awareness of systemic racism and resulting disparities, inclusive entrepreneurship emerged as both a potential solution - and a priority. Centuries of institutional racism, economic violence, and intentional oppression have led us to a critical inflection point. Communities, organizations, and ecosystem builders across the country began actively seeking guidance. Forward Cities was well positioned to stand in the gap.

Since 2014, we have worked with thousands of entrepreneurs, community leaders, grassroots organizations, policy makers, and financial institutions in more than 40 communities. We have been actively listening, connecting, and sensemaking. We leveraged resulting insights to convene community partners in the design and delivery of innovative solutions that address barriers facing underestimated entrepreneurs and uplift their stories.

Top-down economic development is structured to prioritize business attraction and identify highly scalable tech ‘unicorn’ startups. Traditional entrepreneurial ecosystem building assumes that all entrepreneurs benefit from the same starting point. This approach does not acknowledge or address the layered biases, systemic barriers, and complex bureaucracy that is stacked up against historically disenfranchised business owners.

Fay welcomed participants as the E3 Durham Community Navigator Pilot Program kicked off its first in-person Pull-Up at Provident event.

FORWARD CITIES SEEKS TO FLIP THE SCRIPT.

We endeavor to change outcomes for these entrepreneurs by improving systems that are currently ill-equipped to serve their distinctive needs. We are on a mission to transform the way communities see, support, and sustain entrepreneurs of color. We start by changing the narratives around who is/is not an entrepreneur and helping communities understand historic and systemic obstacles. We then equip communities with skills to shift power and collectively address their system inequities. Their new perspective can guide the development of equitable and innovative support networks and funding models.

The Black Wall Street Forward inaugural project launched in 2022 through the generous support of the Truist Foundation, and headquartered at Durham's Provident1898. Pictured from left to right: Pete Cvelich, Dontá Wilson, and Fay Horwitt.

In 2022, we launched two aligned initiatives that use collaborative pilot program development to disrupt silos and traditional power structures. Black Wall Street Forward is a Black-centric, cross-city learning and action network, exploring the past, present, and future of Black Wall Street. Our dedicated BWSF councils in five North Carolina communities launched eight dynamic pilot projects, and our storytelling has reached over 2,700 unique visitors on our website and accumulated over 25,000 page & profile impressions on social media. Our emerging E3 Nation Tour provides an opportunity to convert many of the learnings from our past communities into a 2-day, deep-dive training for entrepreneurial support organizations, local government, and funders. Participating communities will join a six-month learning network designed to help them collectively identify and address barriers through trust building.

As we enter 2023, we believe that our systems change lens will transform the way communities see, support, and sustain entrepreneurs. By 2053, we envision hundreds of E3 Communities catalyzing a national culture that proactively supports every entrepreneur’s pathway to launch and grow a business - building generational wealth and inclusive economic prosperity for all.

Join us as we build an E3 Nation!

Fay Horwitt

President & CEO