Celebrating Black Women in Entrepreneurship was a collaboration event hosted by Women in Business on Tuesday at the Cesar Chavez Community Action Center.
Women in Business at SJSU is a pre-professional organization established in 2016, with the goal of breaking the glass ceiling and the boundaries existing in the business world.
Their mission is to empower, enable and educate their members to become future leaders of society.
The Chavez Community Action Center focuses on engaging students with their community through civic engagement opportunities that deepen educational experience. They also focus on social justice and activism in local communities.
There were three panelists that spoke at the event: Be’Anka Ashaolu, Regina Harris and Andrea Lacy.
Ashaolu is the chief marketing officer and co-founder of Nirvana Soul with her sister Jeronica Macey.
They have been in business since September 2020, when they opened their first location in Downtown San Jose.
They have since expanded to Cupertino and plan to open their third location at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library this summer.
Ashaolu said her identity as a black woman is completely celebrated and validated with Nirvana Soul.
“I don't want to have to code switch between spaces [because] I think everyone should be as authentic as they can be,” Ashaolu said. “The best way to approach your life, no matter what space that you're in, is to lean towards spaces that you're celebrated and not just tolerated.”
The second panelist was Harris, the creator of Prideful Patchez, a company that designs culturally inspired patches.
Before opening her own business, Harris sold patches on Facebook Live because she was not able to work as a street vendor during the coronavirus pandemic.
Currently, the patches can be found in 27 HBCU bookstores.
“My business is focused toward the African American community. We have been embraced very well because people have never seen the patches we created before,” Harris said. “We take education, cultural events and we create patches to send messages out.”
Harris said her identity as a black woman has negatively impacted her line of work.
She said when she first started the business online, her team received hateful messages because of their “Black is Beautiful” and “Black Pride” designs.
“That almost discouraged me from continuing because it was very frightening for me at first. Then, I realized I need to move forward with this because there's somebody out there saying that Black [people] are not beautiful and we shouldn't be prideful,” Harris said.
Harris said she donates patches to different nonprofit organizations like Real Oakland, which helps students with video production.
The last panelist, Andrea Lacy, is the founder and CEO of Luv’s Brownies.
Lacy, who attended SJSU herself, was diagnosed with dyslexia after failing the same math class five times, according to a Good Morning America video.
Lacy said her dyslexia was a blessing in disguise because she doubled the chocolate in a batch of brownies made for a friend.
This friend of hers went on to feature Lacy’s business on the homepage of Cisco.
Lacy said she found out she was adopted later in life and she actually has two identities: Black and Cuban.
“I was raised by a black family but I use Cuban influences from my heritage by playing Celia Cruz in our truck and her song “La Vida Es Un Carnaval” is also the jingle in our app,” Lacy said.
Ashaolu said Nirvana Soul serves as inspiration for the community just by seeing that something like this is possible.
“We had multiple artists come through and create murals for our shop. There's so much talent in San Jose, and the vast majority of them being women and people of color,” Ashaolu said. “At this point, over 55 artists have exhibited their works at our shops.”
Lacy said she never imagined herself working in a dessert truck and actually wanted to work for Hewlett Packard, or HP, since high school.
“I never really thought I'd be baking brownies. When you pay for a premium product, you want it to look presentable,” Lacy said. “I care about every dessert that goes out that pickup window, and I want that person who's receiving it to feel like they got a gift. My driving force for my business is I love making people happy.”
