Soon after the murder of George Floyd I started helping Emily Cooper with her Minnesota Black Business Initiative (MNBBI), along with Rachel Friesen, also of Cooper Law, Cari Twitchell of Custom Content, and Susan Staupe of Juris Digital. MNBBI is a project to build Black wealth by helping increase the visibility of Black-owned Minnesota businesses through a directory and digital marketing efforts, and to teach Black youth to do that digital marketing work.
MNBBI includes the Minnesota Black-Owned Business Directory—recently featured on MPR News—with more 150 Black-owned businesses as of this writing.
In 2021, MNBBI partnered with The BrandLab to create a paid internship program for Black youth, who will learn digital marketing from a team of experts while building websites and creating marketing campaigns for Black-owned businesses. They will also learn how to start a career in digital marketing, or to start their own digital marketing business.
Currently, MNBBI is fundraising in order to pay interns and provide them with the tools such as laptops, software subscriptions, and photography equipment.