For the second consecutive 12 months, BRIC media turned dwelling to Progress Playbook’s Renaissance Summit, bringing collectively creators and innovators within the spirit of community-building and entrepreneurship. Geared towards anybody in search of an entrepreneurial journey, Progress Playbook supplies a number of pathways to attain success by mentorship, assets, and connecting individuals and communities.
This 12 months, the one-day occasion anticipated a rise in attendees, 30% of whom had been estimated to be from NYCHA housing. Progress Playbook works alongside the RIIS Program, which supplies programming in NYCHA neighborhoods. Lloyd Cambridge, CEO and founding father of Progress Playbook, mentioned you will need to embody this often disregarded inhabitants within the dialogue of and place to develop economically.
As a local of Brownsville, Brooklyn, the place nearly all of his household resided in NYCHA housing, Cambridge mentioned, “It was essential for me to empower, to equip of us in these neighborhoods. We’ve a variety of success tales from individuals who had been born and raised in NYCHA that now have profitable companies as a solution to have financial mobility.”
Group and connection had been recurring themes as host Kamla Karina Millwood, founding father of Palatial Publishing, inspired visitors to attach with at the very least 20 individuals all through the occasion, saying, “Again within the day, it was cute to be good and shy; not anymore.”
Along with two panel discussions masking community- constructing and possession, the Renaissance Summit gave recognition to the exhausting work of its 2024/2025 cohort individuals with award plaques, and supplied a platform for 4 of the 14 individuals from the Blueprint Challenge: Activate Spring 2025 cohort to pitch their companies to the complete summit.
As a part of her pitch, returning Renaissance 2024 participant Andrea Davis-Woods of Juiced It!, a cold-pressed pure juice enterprise, sought a mentor to assist in attaining her further targets. She discovered it in Millwood, who publicly supplied to satisfy that want.
Zaki Smith, founding father of Younger Barbers Initiative, boasted of coaching 120 highschool college students within the artwork of barbering from 2024 to 2025. He’s presently seeking to broaden his providers to a number of faculties within the Division of Training (DOE) to offer hands-on vocational abilities, life abilities, and speedy entrepreneurial potential for college kids. He heard about Progress Playbook by a buddy and, on the time, was main a marketing campaign for the Clear Slate Act, laws that seals felony information to permit previously incarcerated New Yorkers the prospect for a recent begin.
Previously incarcerated himself, Smith realized that each time he went again into the jail system, he ended up working within the barbershop. Sooner or later he requested himself, “Why am I right here once more? I even have a talent right here.” Smith will get emotional when he reminisces about his lived experiences that prompted the creation and improvement of his barbering program.
As a DOE educator, he prefers to work with younger individuals and partially considers his program a safety measure in ensuring they keep on the best path. “My aim is that even when a teenager walks out of highschool and doesn’t turn out to be a barber, they’ve that at the back of their thoughts: ‘Hey, I truly know the best way to lower hair. I’ve that talent.’”
Smith’s participation in Progress Playbook’s programming has been integral to his success. He credit this system with offering entry to assets, specialists, and coaches; help in creating infrastructure and programs; and cash administration schooling.
The Blueprint Challenge: Make clear Winter 2025 Cohort was most spectacular — the complete nine-person group consisted of solely girls with companies that ranged from content material creation to life teaching. Elizabeth Elohim’s firm, Melabomb, which focuses on coloured lashes, was birthed out of a singular genetic mutation that causes a few of her lashes to develop in grey. She mentioned Progress Playbook “was an amazing motivator for me at a time that I used to be caught, however nonetheless actually obsessed with my enterprise. This system does what it says it does: Make clear and slender in on what you need to do.”
The success of Progress Playbook hinges on contracts by authorities businesses, nonprofits, and the numerous relationships Cambridge has cultivated all through his years in enterprise options. Janice Fredericks of East Elmhurst, Queens, founding father of the Retail Genius, mentioned she turned acquainted with Cambridge lengthy earlier than the creation of Progress Playbook by his work at NYC Enterprise Options. As soon as he began Progress Playbook, she mentioned, “he was nonetheless reaching out and consulting with me.”
Fredericks turned the primary Black girl to personal a magnificence provide retailer in New York Metropolis. After eight years of operating her enterprise, she closed its doorways to help different Black and Brown individuals in opening magnificence provide shops throughout america and in elements of the Caribbean. She felt the significance of being a pioneer and making a protected area the place Black girls might come to buy and share their hair experiences.
She described the significance of Progress Playbook and the Renaissance Summit as a “motion”: “It’s an enormous, impactful motion. We’re nonetheless on this journey as Black entrepreneurs of making an attempt to get possession and making an attempt to get forward.” She praised Cambridge for being a game-changer by offering a platform for daring leaders and change-makers to emerge confidently and be supported by different Black entrepreneurs. “It’s completely great,” she mentioned.
Metropolis Councilmember Rita Joseph of District 40 and Ranti Ogunleye, director on the NYC Workplace of Neighborhood Security, had been additionally in attendance. The latter assists within the funding of Progress Playbook by offering their largest contracts. Cambridge mentioned of that partnership that “the fantastic thing about working with that group is that they need to work with Black and Brown organizations which are from the neighborhood, that perceive the neighborhood, that perceive the individuals, and that may help them to create these revolutionary options.”
Cambridge’s hope for the long run is to help in constructing for-profit companies that may fund upcoming social endeavors so Progress Playbook and its individuals are much less reliant on authorities funding. Cambridge additionally appears ahead to seeing individuals in his applications and the communities they dwell in flourish in wholesome and vibrant neighborhoods with the infrastructure and assets to help them. “I see Progress Playbook serving to to create an ecosystem to attain that imaginative and prescient.”
