US banks adapt DEI efforts under Trump's pressure at Sibos Frankfurt

The "Rooted in Money" series from Rooted Finance is important reading this Black History Month - exploring how wealth inequality, representation, and access intersect across the financial sector. At ABCUL, we’re proud to collaborate with Muna Yassin MBE and Rooted Finance through initiatives like Equity in Finance, helping to elevate these vital conversations and drive meaningful change across our movement. 💬 👇 Read Muna's blog linked below to learn more.

I just watched it happen again. A Black woman's framework—documented, timestamped, proven to save $3.2M—presented by someone else at a major tech conference. The presenter got a standing ovation. The creator got erased. But here's what's changing the game: We're building an economy of evidence. Not representation metrics. Not diversity theater. Attribution backed by blockchain-level proof. When I started tracking this pattern in 2019, the extraction was invisible. Now? Every Slack message = timestamped. Every framework = version-controlled. Every idea = documented origin. The brutal truth: They've been reselling our brilliance for centuries. But digital fingerprints don't lie. Here's what I'm seeing founders do differently: • Recording every strategy session • Watermarking frameworks with metadata • Building IP portfolios before they build products • Creating audit trails that lawyers salivate over One founder I know invoiced her former employer $450K. For using her customer retention model. That they said "wouldn't scale." Until it scaled to $8M in savings. She had the receipts. They paid within 72 hours. This isn't about revenge. It's about economics. When attribution becomes enforceable, extraction becomes expensive. When documentation becomes standard, theft becomes traceable. When Black women treat ideas like assets, corporations learn to license instead of steal. The next civil rights movement won't march on Washington. It'll march into boardrooms with invoices. Because receipts aren't just power. They're compound interest on centuries of unpaid brilliance. Document everything. Price accordingly. Thank You; It's True.™ Black Women's Wealth Lab™ #BlackWomensWealthLab #ThankYouItsTrue

This post captures something I’ve experienced repeatedly this year. Original research — even when published by national outlets like MSNBC and featured on the front page of The New York Times — is still too often used without attribution. When I broke the story that more than 300,000 Black women had been pushed out of the labor force — and that during the same period, 319,000 Black women lost jobs while 365,000 white men gained them — the data spread quickly. Unfortunately, a great deal of it circulated without credit to its original source (me). As Cynthia writes here, “When attribution becomes enforceable, extraction becomes expensive.” That’s not just true for frameworks ��� it’s true for data, too. Accountability isn’t about ego. It’s about economics, integrity, and the sustainability of evidence-based work. #GenderEconomics #EquityByDesign #EconomicJustice #ResearchIntegrity #BlackWomenAndTheEconomy Essence Communications Inc. BET The WIE Suite #TheRoot Nancy Levine Stearns Payton Parkin, M.S. Tamara Brown, J.D. Michelle Grocholsky Dr. Janice Gassam Asare, (Ph.D.) Kimberly S. Reed, CDE® Meg Crumbine Samantha Katz Cindy Gallop Mark Gannott Matt Lawton Sundee Williams Santana Inniss, MS MCPC Tara Turk-Haynes Morgan Williams

Next up in the Rooted in Money #BHM blog series features Ugo Ikokwu, Programme Lead for the Racial and Economic Justice Fund at Trust for London discussing 'Community-Led Solutions: The Power of Grassroots Financial Inclusion' Ugo explains precisely why community-led approaches are not an add-on: they are central to how financial power is built and sustained within the Black community. True, lasting financial transformation comes from solutions that are informed by, and accountable to, the people they serve. The blog also highlights the essential work of organisations challenging these deep-rooted barriers, these include Rooted Finance's work the Equity in Finance project, building pathways to financial inclusion that start with lived experience, as well as COMMUNOMICS who are bridging the gap between informal community systems like ROSCAs and mainstream finance, pushing for regulatory frameworks that recognise these as legitimate financial tools and Black Co-op CIC who are exploring complex models of cooperative ownership and community wealth-building to ensure assets and power stay within the community for the long haul. #communityled #livedexperience #communitywealth #power #pride This piece is a fantastic call to action and we thank Ugo Ikokwu for his support and leadership in this space #racialjustice #financialInclusion #blackcommunities #solutions #TrustForLondon #RacialEconomicJustice #CommunityPower #FinancialJustice #BlackHistoryMonth #RootedFinance #ethnicitypremium #equityinfinance #roscas #share #comment #repost🔗 Click to read full blog https://lnkd.in/etWzZwcZ

Thousands of investors, founders, and advisors have now seen BLACK. It doesn’t guess. Doesn’t negotiate. Doesn’t rely on “trust me” founder stories. When I first posted about pre-LOI risk leverage, the same question kept coming up: “How do you get pricing-grade diligence before exclusivity?” So I documented the entire system. Every posture question. Every artifact. Every governance map. Here’s what BLACK actually does for acquirers: ✅ Surfaces multimillion-dollar valuation gaps in a 45-minute call ✅ Flags IP, OSS, and key-person risk before legal review ✅ Compresses diligence timelines by weeks ✅ Produces LP-ready, IC-friendly Binary Risk Memos ✅ Preserves confidentiality with zero system access All of it running pre-LOI, aligned to ILPA, ISO, and OECD governance standards. This is the exact setup serious buyers are now using to get better terms without burning months or millions on confirmatory diligence. The protocol that gives them leverage back. I’m releasing everything: → Full process overview → Modeled case studies → Mathematical rigor guide → Deck and more This might be your last chance to see it open. Ready? 👇 Comment BLACK and I’ll send you the full package. P.S. Save this post if you want faster access. #PrivateEquity #PrivateMarkets #Liquidity #Valuations #AlternativeInvestments #InstitutionalInvestors

Black wealth is vanishing. But we can change the story. 🖤💼 👉 Did you know? If nothing changes, Black household wealth is projected to fall to $0 by 2053. That’s why The D9Network is building strategies rooted in ownership, collaboration, and legacy. This isn’t just about business. It’s about building futures. 🔗 Learn more at www.thed9network.com #CloseTheWealthGap #BlackWealth #BlackLegacy #TheD9Network #EconomicEmpowerment #GenerationalWealth #BlackExcellence

Challenging the Premise: How Can You Measure a Dollar That Never Existed? For nearly three decades, the Selig Center for Economic Growth has issued annual reports claiming to quantify Black consumer spending power — most recently estimating it at $1.8 trillion. Those numbers are routinely cited by banks, corporations, and government agencies as evidence of progress and participation in the U.S. economy. Yet the Selig model never identified a sovereign financial instrument or a central ledger that actually represents a “Black dollar.” It measured retail participation and consumer outflow within the U.S. dollar system, not independent economic sovereignty or community reinvestment. That analytical gap matters: if spending is tracked only as consumption within another group’s economy, then there is no measurable accumulation, no intergenerational equity, and no recorded GDP for Black America itself. Economic Consequence By building policy, marketing, and funding models on those incomplete numbers, institutions have underestimated: 1. Leakage — the rate at which money leaves Black communities after each transaction. 2. Invisibility — the lack of a recorded Black asset registry or reserve mechanism. 3. Accountability — the absence of parity data to guide restitution or equitable reinvestment. This distortion contributes to a failing economic cycle where reported “trillions” circulate externally but leave no measurable internal growth. Rectifying the Record With the Loc Nation Dollar (LND) now formally codified — through UCC filings, trust structures, and federal identifiers — the Black economy gains the infrastructure that has been missing from U.S. metrics. For the first time, spending, saving, lending, and restitution can be audited on an independent ledger, anchored to parity rules and fiscal transparency. That converts rhetoric into data and positions the LND as the first verifiable baseline for Black economic sovereignty.

🎙️“It’s better to light a candle than complain in the dark.” 💬 (The Growth Guide – Tales, Tools & Tips on a Tuesday) I came across the quote at the end of an episode of an 80’s TV show Judy and I watched yesterday on Tubi named ‘T and T’ with the inimitable Mr T of ‘The A Team’ fame. Don't judge me. 😎 It really resonated… …and it made me think of the persistent data on economic inequality within the UK, particularly concerning the Black community. Looking at the data, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. However, the way forward lies in a shift of focus. The 'darkness' is the systemic barrier. The 'complaint' is passive recognition of the problem. The 'candle' represents intentional, focused action to address the economic inequality and to close the wealth gap. Here are a few 'candles' that we need to light. ⤵️ 1️⃣ Supporting Black Entrepreneurship I always say that consumption is the first best form of investment. In fact, it determines whether a business is scalable or not. No sales means no scaling. Therefore, actively buying from, investing in, as well as mentoring, and commissioning services from Black-owned businesses will create jobs and build generational wealth. 2️⃣ Democratising Access to Capital It is not a secret that Black-owned businesses consistently face lower approval rates for loans and receive a vastly disproportionately small share of venture capital funding compared to White-owned businesses. Like Eric D. Collins says consistently in our conversations and in his articles in Pitch Black Magazine, it’s about building bigger, marketing wider and thinking beyond our small business boundaries. 'We Don't Need Permission' to do that! 3️⃣ Advocating for Policy Change Of course, not everyone will be an entrepreneur. Some of us will need to be executives within large corporates making decisions so that our community can have access to contracts, for example. To make this process easier, we must push for data-driven policies that address pay gaps, hiring biases, and procurement disparities. 🕯️ So, what candle, big or small, are you committed to lighting this month and beyond to to support economic empowerment in the UK Black community? It’s no longer about just talk, because as the saying goes, ‘Talk is cheap!’ #EconomicEquality #UKBusiness #DEI #BlackInBusiness #SocialImpact

#ThrowbackThursday to a couple of weeks ago when I flew from California to Washington DC to speak at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 54th Annual Legislative Conference. Block Advisors by H&R Block and Boss Women Media (shoutout to Marty McDonald for the production magic) invited me to join the Wealth Talk: Limitless Possibilities panel. And let me tell you what happened in that room at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center: We didn't talk AT people. We talked WITH them. The conversation went beyond financial literacy tips and budget spreadsheets. We got uncomfortably honest about: → Why so many of us are trapped in survival mode when we should be building wealth → The money moves our parents couldn't teach us because they never learned them → How to break generational patterns that keep Black families stuck → The mindset shifts required to go from hustling to sustaining Here's what surprised me: The room was PACKED. Business owners, policy makers, community leaders, founders - all furiously taking notes. Some had tears in their eyes. Others were nodding so hard I thought their necks would hurt. Because this wasn't another "just save more and invest" talk. This was about dismantling the psychological barriers that make wealth feel impossible. This was about economic mobility as a community imperative, not just an individual goal. One woman approached me after and said: "I've been in business for 15 years and I'm just now realizing I've been operating from survival, not strategy. This changes everything." THAT'S why I got on that plane. THAT'S why this work matters. THAT'S why we need more of these conversations in more rooms. The wealth gap won't close with workshops alone. But when we combine financial education with mindset transformation, policy awareness with practical action, and individual success with community impact? The possibilities really are limitless. This was just the FIRST speaking engagement of my DC week. More to share. But this one? This one reminded me why I do what I do. #WealthBuilding #CongressionalBlackCaucus #ALC54 #FinancialLiteracy #EconomicMobility #GenerationalWealth #BlackBusiness #Leadership #CommunityImpact #MindsetShift #BlockAdvisors #BossWomenMedia #WashingtonDC

Inside the Shadow Economy: How the Hidden System Really Works This video explores how the black market and shadow economy work — from unrecorded cash deals to global smuggling networks. Learn how this hidden system impacts countries, development, and official data around the world.