BIPOC Biz Accelerator Kicks Off With 4th Cohort

Dawn Hawkins Johnson left her corporate healthcare job at the height of the pandemic to start her own consulting company fighting for a more equitable industry.

One of the first stops she made along the way of her entrepreneurial journey was a downtown-based program focused on training new business owners of color. Two years later, she’s now leading that program as it embarks upon its fourth cohort.

Hawkins Johnson shared her story of taking a big risk amidst a global pandemic and finding her way with the help of some New Haven business mentors on Tuesday, when she helped lead the orientation session for a new cohort of so-called KNOWNpreneurs at the Palladium building at 139 Orange St. The program was founded by local landlord Juan Salas-Romer, and is targeted at helping a next generation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) businessowners.

Participating in the mentorship and incubator program, she said, taught her how to really run a business, scale up her company, and strengthen the network she needs to succeed with her own nascent company, DHJ Services.

In addition to running her own business, Hawkins Johnson is also now a program director for the fourth cohort of KNOWNpreneurs.

“I went to a PWI [predominantly white institution], UMD [University of Maryland], and I graduated and never looked back,” Hawkins Johnson said. ​“But, with KNOWNpreneurs I was hooked. I kept running into Juan and giving him ideas for things to add to the next session and eventually he told me to run it, so I just keep coming back for more because coming here fills me with such inspiration.”

Salas-Romer described KNOWNpreneurs as a dedicated 16-week ​“business accelerator” program for entrepreneurs who have run a business for more than two years and need help scaling up their business.

Through weekly two-hour educational sessions, monthly meetings with a ​“key performance coach,” monthly meetings with a mentor, and 16 networking events, the program provides entrepreneurs with skills including business planning, budgeting and accounting, accessing capital, marketing, and community.

Just like Hawkins Johnson, who built up her own business out of the carnage of the pandemic, Salas-Romer said he founded the KNOWNpreneurs program in part because of the many challenges he saw all around him during the early months of Covid-19. He also took inspiration from his own immigrant story when launching this effort.

In 2019, even before the pandemic began, Salas-Romer was beginning to see parallels in the decline of the middle class of America and his home country, Venezuela.

For him, the decline of the middle class and emergence of an extreme wealth gap had led to the collapse of his home country of Venezuela, and he wanted to do his part to fight against the same scourge in his adopted home in the U.S.

He also honed in on BIPOC communities in the U.S. as Black and Latino communities have a median income that is 10 times lower than the white communities in this country, he said.

Having already lived and worked in New Haven for 17 years in real estate and banking, he opened up the KNOWN office workspace at 139 Orange St. The 6,000 square-foot office space is a collaborative workspace where members of the BIPOC community can access resources including networking events and mentorship opportunities. During the pandemic, he also created the KNOWNpreneurs program.

“This program helps BIPOC communities scale their business, organize their business, and gives them the confidence to take their business to the next level through giving them connections and giving them resources,” Kim Weston, a local artist and one of the organizers of the program, said.

“One of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs of color face is getting access to capital because historically banks don’t lend to people of color,” Rae Serrano, another alum of the program who has come back to help run it, told the Independent. ​“Through providing participants with information on how to keep proper finances and provide concrete business plans as well as leveraging the connections of Juan, we are helping these entrepreneurs access capital.”

The program’s first three cohorts have succeeded after graduation with the program reporting that 51 percent of alumni have been able to raise capital and that, overall, alums have seen their average revenue increase by 39 percent.

Members of the fourth cohort of the program told the Independent about how excited they are after the first session wrapped up Tuesday morning. 

“In an industry that is dominated by white men it can be difficult to break through,” Rosalee Daley, who opened a transportation company in 2020, said. ​“But, I already learned so much today from listening to them speak and making my own goals for the next four months.”

Jazmi Sanders, who founded her haircare line MyRoots in 2018 but took a break from the work and has just restarted her company, said that she is looking forward to learning how to run the back end of her business.

“I started not knowing how to run the back end with financials and accounting and really just managing the business,” Sanders said. ​“I’m nervous, but being here and having mentors is going to really teach me how to thrive.”