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Kayla Rowe turned pain into a business empire that is helping countless women and raking in major revenue. Rowe is a University of South Florida alum with a degree in public health , which she obtained in 2015, according to information on her LinkedIn. Her mother also planted the seed for her interest in health as a certified nursing assistant, Ebony reports. However, the catalyst for Rowe becoming a founder came after experiencing a miscarriage when she was five months pregnant in 2021. “That was very hard for me,” she told Ebony. “After that happened, I became more aware of everything, what I was eating, putting on my body, [and] I just became more cognizant and aware of health.” Her Fantasy Box A year later, Rowe launched Her Fantasy Box, a plant-based feminine hygiene and wellness brand. With a focus on transparency, safety, and women’s wellness, Rowe shared that it was important for ingredients to be nontoxic and not include parabens, phthalates, and other harmful chemicals...
Tabitha Brown is clearing the air about her partnership with Target. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, the retailer rolled back on its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments in early 2025, a move that helped fuel a consumer boycott that remains ongoing. While Target was not the only major retailer to scale back DEI efforts, many critics focused on the company because of its previous push to support Black-owned businesses and other minority groups. Brown is among those business owners whose products are sold at Target stores. She is under a licensing deal with the retailer, and her haircare brand Donna’s Recipe — launched in partnership with Gina Woods — is shelved in the store, as AFROTECH™ previously told you. Brown made a discreet Instagram post on January 24, not mentioning a single word, but the implication that she was referencing the retailer was evident. During an interview on iHeartPodcast’s “Not My Best Moment” hosted by KevOnStage, Brown shared how Black...
Mielle Organics has scored a first-of-its-kind partnership. The textured-hair care brand has experienced massive success. It is currently stocked by more than 100,000 retailers such as Target, CVS, Walgreens, Kroger, JCPenney, and Walmart, and in 2021, it secured $100 million in a non-dilutive round led by Berkshire Partners, as AFROTECH™ previously reported. The brand started when its founder, Monique Rodriguez, took a leap of faith when she walked away from a career in nursing to launch the venture with the help of her husband, Melvin. Today, the pair still lead the company as CEO and COO following the company’s acquisition by P&G Beauty in 2023, per AFROTECH™. What’s more, it’s still making significant moves. According to a press release, Mielle Organics has made history as the first official textured-hair care partner of the NFL. View this post on Instagram Tracie Rodburg, the NFL’s senior vice president of global partnerships, said the league is “excited” to work with Mielle...
Black-woman-owned Prismm has secured significant funding to help families in times of crisis. Prismm Prismm is a transaction-enabled digital vault. It stores critical records that become essential during an emergency. Users can upload documents, property and asset information, and financial accounts. They can also add beneficiaries, trusted persons, lawyers, executors, or advisors as connections, granting them view-only, view-and-modify, or no access across all categories, according to the company’s website. All information stored on Prismm is encrypted using HTTPS and kept in a digital vault that can be decrypted only with an authorized user account and the correct account key. Prismm intends to protect deposits for financial institutions and automate the inheritance transfer process, which is timely given that $84.4 trillion in wealth is projected to be transferred to Millennial and Gen X heirs by 2045, according to financial services organization, Cerulli Associates. Inception...
Joulenie Pierre had faith the size of a mustard seed and has watched her bakery grow to new heights. Pierre was a college student double-majoring in economics and political science on a pre-law track in Miami when she ventured into entrepreneurship. To support herself financially, she had a job working 30 hours a week at Lululemon, she shared on TikTok. Feeling stressed, she said she leaned into her passion for baking. “Baking was my way of having my own peace, my own clarity, and being as calm as I possibly can be. It helped keep me grounded. It was like my form of therapy essentially,” Pierre, 20, explained on TikTok. @therollanddough Part 2 out of 5 addressing the concerns ♬ original sound – Roll & Dough Roll and Dough With the help of her business partner, Jovan, she launched Roll and Dough. Pierre had just $100 in her bank account at the time and was waiting on her financial aid to come in to cover her rent. She went two months without being able to pay her rent, but she did...
This Black-woman-owned wine brand is expanding its reach while delivering a more personalized customer experience. IBest Wines is the brainchild of Ingrid Best, a respected leader in the wine and spirits sectors who wants to share her love of South Africa with wine enthusiasts across the globe. She got her start as a brand ambassador and remained in the industry for 20 years, building her experience in branding and marketing with Diageo, Moët Hennessy, and Bacardi (working with Jay-Z’s D’USSE), as AFROTECH™ previously reported. “I was so fortunate to be exposed to every facet of the business, which typically, in an ambassador role, you aren’t exposed to,” Best told BET.com. She now has established ownership in the industry through IBest Wines, which launched in 2023 and was inspired by her time in South Africa, as AFROTECH™ previously reported. “I fell in love with South Africa quickly and, over time, discovered the infinite layers the country has to offer — from its wine to its...
Angel Mosley is equipping companies to mitigate cybersecurity risks. Mosley is a cybersecurity consultant and risk management professional who was first inspired to join the field while at Jackson State University. She scored an internship with Virgin Records and BMG Distribution and was living the dream, she told AFROTECH™. She even had a chance to be around entertainers such as Janet Jackson and Ice Cube. Ultimately, her interest in the field would be sparked after wandering into a computer room. “When you’re in college, you think you can ask anybody anything. So I was like, ‘Hey, how much money did you make when you graduated from college?’ [And they said], ‘Oh, we graduated making $60,000 a year,’ which back then was a lot of money. Right now, it’s still good money,” Mosley explained. “But I was like, $30,000, $60,000. I’ve always liked computers. I went back to school, changed my major to computer science, and never looked back.” She graduated from Jackson State University in...
Twama Nambili is raising funding for her startup, which uses AI to improve workflows for marketing and creative professionals. Aeone The former Amazon senior product manager, who has experience in consulting, integrated marketing, and strategy, is stepping into the marketing technology space, which is a $580 billion industry, per Mordor Intelligence. She is the founder of Aeone , a bootstrapped AI-powered startup that streamlines marketing and creative workflows by uniting content creation, AI-powered automation, and analytics in one platform, according to a press release shared with AFROTECH™. “A typical marketing team member or content creator today uses many disconnected tools, which can be frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive,” Nambili said in a press release. “Aeone is building a platform that brings everything together in one place. It’s ambitious, yes, but the value it delivers is transformative for teams of all sizes,” Nambili continued. $4M Raise Already, Aeone has a...
Like many entrepreneurs, Tracee Ellis Ross had to think creatively about how she launched her business. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, she is the proud founder of Pattern Beauty, a haircare brand that serves as a love language to the textured hair community with offerings including washes, treatments, styling tools, and more. View this post on Instagram She pitched the idea while she was acting on the TV show “Girlfriends,” and it was not initially understood, but her self-belief helped bring it to the market in 2019. “Nobody was interested. Nobody would understand why an actress would be making hair products. Nobody understood the difference between hair products that were for curly, coily, and tight-textured versus straight,” she explained during an interview with Self Magazine. “People were just like ‘I don’t get it.’ “So I heard all different kinds of nos and, from ‘Girlfriends’ into ‘Black-ish,’ not only was I gaining this larger platform, but I was learning how to express...
Scarlet by RedDrop Co-Founders Dana Roberts and Monica Williams are celebrating great success for their business, driven by a vision to support young girls navigating puberty. It all started with Robert’s time teaching fifth graders in an Atlanta classroom. She was approached by a student who had started her period and felt that she was dying, according to Yahoo! News. This would lead her to launch RedDrop, which was rebranded to Scarlet by RedDrop in 2025, alongside physician Williams, to serve tweens and teens. It offers pads, tampons, and period kits that include pads in various sizes, as well as a diary that shares helpful tips, according to its website. “RedDrop was our beginning, born from a desire to fill a gap in puberty care for school-age girls,” Williams told Inc. “But as we grew, we realized our name no longer held all that we were becoming. The rebrand reflects the company’s new educational period-care product line that supports tweens and teens at every stage of their...
Founder Piersten Gaines turned a white space in the market into a money-making business. The Harvard Business School (HBS) graduate noticed her friends traveling from Boston, MA, to other cities, such as New York and Houston, TX, forking over $250 for blowouts. Meanwhile, she spent only $45 at a dry bar and avoided the inconvenience of the travel costs. Gaines was convinced that there should be a solution out in the world to address this pain point for the textured hair community. She was determined to launch one, despite not having any prior experience in the industry, she said during a fireside chat held during an exclusive happy hour, hosted by Slauson & Co. and Black Women in Venture Capital, to kick off AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 in Houston. Pressed Roots It would be losing her mother to lymphoma during her second semester at HBS that reshaped her goals and inspired her to create Pressed Roots, Boston Voyager reports. Its formation was aided by Gaines’s hairstylist from the dry...
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones plans to open The North Star Books + Bar in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in 2026, according to its website. The literary space will occupy the former Macon Hardware store at the corner of Macon Street and Marcus Garvey Boulevard, a Black-owned business that closed in 2023, notes the Brownstoner. Hannah-Jones is partnering with local entrepreneurs Rotimi and Ayo Akinnuoye, the husband-and-wife team behind Bed-Stuy establishments Bed-Vyne Wine, Bed-Vyne Brew, and Bed-Vyne Cocktail, and DJ Johnson, owner of Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans, per The North Star Books + Bar’s website. The group will convert the two-story brick building into a bookstore and bar with community-focused programming. “I’m very plugged into the writer community, I’m friends with a lot of great writers, and I wanted to bring those writers into our community,” Hannah-Jones told Brownstoner. “Whenever you have big book events in the city, they’re not...
Chemist Ron Robinson is betting on the next generation of entrepreneurs. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, Robinson founded BeautyStat Cosmetics, a bootstrapped skincare company with product offerings including a triple- patented stable vitamin C, notes Beauty Matter. He also is a chemist and key formulator for Rhodes, a multi-category lifestyle beauty brand founded by actress Hailey Bieber. Elf Beauty acquired Rhodes for $1 billion earlier this year. “Proud day for science. Hailey, Michael @ratty Lauren @laurenratner and the entire @rhode team – Thank you for bringing us on as partners from the very beginning,” Robinson wrote on Instagram. “While some may have experts just for marketing, you truly leaned into the science and allowed us to be part of the team. Because of you, brands have taken notice and now value the need for science-led formulations. This has been the journey of a lifetime and we are proud to be a part of it.” Yes Day Robinson is now dedicating some of his time to...
LVHM is considering selling its stake in Fenty Beauty. Fenty Beauty And LVMH’s Involvement In 2017, Rihanna brought Fenty Beauty to market with Kendo Brands, LVMH’s in-house beauty incubator, according to CNBC. Ownership was split 50/50 between Rihanna and LVMH. Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, shared rave reviews of the Barbados-born music artist and entrepreneur in 2019. “Everybody knows Rihanna as a wonderful singer, but through our partnership at Fenty Beauty, I discovered a true entrepreneur, a real CEO and a terrific leader. She naturally finds her full place within LVMH,” Arnault said in a statement, according to CNN. Fenty Beauty’s Success Fenty Beauty launched with 40 shades of foundation, which catered to people of all skin tones. Its product offerings, including lip gloss, all-over highlighter, plumping primer, and hair and skincare, continue to be a home run for consumers. In fact, the company made $450 million in net sales last year and has a valuation that...
Karima Williams is behind an AI-powered web platform that can be used for your biggest crash outs. The Howard University graduate from Prince George’s County, Maryland, started teaching people how to use technology while working for Obamacare. She later moved into IT after Trump was elected, and got into crypto through her work in the private sector, with a seven-year streak with startups until she was laid off. “I started off with me teaching crypto basics like safety, wallets, yields … Then it branched into me teaching about AI and AI agents because I was learning about them as I was teaching,” she told AFROTECH™. “And by the time I got let go from my company, I was more so full into the AI part of it, and I continued to teach AI and live stream,” Williams added. Williams went down a rabbit hole of AI tools, including Lovable, a no-code AI builder, and Claude, an AI-powered assistant that she began using heavily in October 2024. She calls Claude her “AI bestie,” and it served as a...
