NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

New technologies coupled with recent changes to century-old investing regulations have opened up new pathways for anyone to be an impact investor and for entrepreneurs to leverage their online communities, networks, customer base, and social influence to raise capital. This panel will explore both the theoretical potential and real-world examples of how Equity Crowdfunding is starting to break down barriers and democratize access to both direct investing and impact capital for anyone looking to become an investor or raise money. More specifically, we will explore how these fundraising techniques and their corresponding investment opportunities can serve BIPOC business owners who have historically encountered barriers to accessing seed capital, business banking, and venture/private equity funding.

Cheree Warrick is co-founder of The 10K Project – the largest community of investors who actively fund Black-owned businesses. As a business plan writer, Cheree has helped her clients raise millions of dollars. Her Black clients, unfortunately, were unable to raise money as easily as other communities. So she decided to do something about it by launching a community of individuals who invest as little as $100 into Black-owned businesses.

Cheree is not only a full-time business plan writer but also author of the book – Creating Business Plans that Actually Get Financed – which helps business owners understand exactly what investors want to know before making a commitment. The book and her strategies are praised by numerous angel investors and commercial bankers including Barbara Corcoran of the hit TV show Shark Tank and Valerie Gaydos – founder of the Angel Venture Forum of D.C.

Cheree holds a Bachelors degree in International Business from American University and a Masters degree in Finance from George Washington University.

Nathan Schneider is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads the Media Enterprise Design Lab and the MA program in Media and Public Engagement. He is the author of Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that is Shaping the Next Economy, published by Nation Books, and two previous books, God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet and Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse, both published by University of California Press.

Recent scholarship has been published in New Media & Society, Feminist Media Studies, the Georgetown Law Technology Review, and Media, Culture & Society, among other journals. He has also reported for publications including Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and others, along with regular columns for America, a national Catholic magazine. He has lectured at universities including Columbia, Fordham, Harvard, MIT, NYU, the University of Bologna, and Yale. In 2015, he co-organized “Platform Cooperativism,” a pioneering conference on democratic online platforms at The New School, and co-edited the subsequent book, Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and Fairer Internet.

Follow his work on social media at @ntnsndr or at his website.

GW Chew, aka Chef Chew, is the Founder & CEO of Something Better Foods Inc. and has been a vegan food inventor/restaurateur for over 15 years. Adopted at birth into a family with the last name “Chew,” Chef Chew believes that he was born with a mission and purpose to change lives for the better, one chew at a time.

Chef Chew grew up in the “country” amongst a family of very heavy meat eaters and noticed over time that a lot of different diseases, from diabetes to cancer, plagued the members of his family. He later discovered that many of those same diseases have been linked to poor diet and overconsumption of animal products.

Inspired to begin living a healthy lifestyle, Chef Chew switched to a plant-based diet in 2001 and started experimenting with creating vegan food products in 2004. He painstakingly invented the Better Chew proteins in his mom’s kitchen and has perfected the textures and taste over the past 15 years.

As part of his mission to democratize the access of healthy food, Chef Chew most recently created the Better Chew Box to deliver healthy and affordable plant-based protein solutions directly to local communities!