Forward Cities

Forward Cities believes that every entrepreneur deserves an equitable chance to launch and grow a business that generates wealth for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Our Mission

Forward Cities is on a mission to catalyze wealth building opportunities for Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous entrepreneurs by transforming the way local communities see, support, and sustain them.

Our History

Forward Cities was launched in 2014, at a time of growing concern that rising income inequality and a widening racial wealth gap were leaving many people and communities behind, particularly people of color and the communities where they live. We initially chose to focus our efforts on expanding entrepreneurship among Black residents in underserved communities, since business ownership is a proven pathway to wealth attainment and creates new wealth faster than wage employment. Moreover, since Black-owned businesses tend to hire more from the Black community, creating jobs for neighborhood residents, we expected that our efforts would have a multiplier effect that would not only improve the health of the Black community, but also increase regional prosperity.

Our work has shown that race is the biggest barrier to inclusive entrepreneurship, and communities need to address racial issues head on. We believe that requires surfacing and actively working to eliminate race-based biases, systemic barriers, and the complex bureaucracy that prevents Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous entrepreneurs from reaching their full potential. Achieving equity in entrepreneurship requires building ecosystems specifically designed to support Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous entrepreneurs, rather than working through existing systems.

In the course of our Black Wall Street Forward initiative and our work in more than 40 other cities across the US, we have found that building entrepreneurial support systems that can serve a more diverse population of entrepreneurs is a complex task that requires a distinctive set of skills and leaders with those skills are in short supply. The individuals leading this work currently have few opportunities to interact with and support each other across communities. Moreover, they tend to burn out quickly and are difficult to replace. This shortage of leaders is a critical constraint to expanding the ranks of underrepresented entrepreneurs, and to achieving our long-term vision of giving every entrepreneur an equitable chance to launch and grow a business that generates wealth for themselves, their families, and their communities.

In response, we are now focusing our efforts on building two action-learning networks. These networks engage individuals and communities building entrepreneurial support systems that serve a more diverse population of entrepreneurs and give them the opportunity to learn from and with each other. One network, E3 Nation, piloted in 2023 through our E3 Nation Tour, will focus on equipping community-wide entrepreneurial support systems to serve underrepresented entrepreneurs. The other network is set to focus on building entrepreneurial support systems specifically designed to support the launch and growth of Black-owned businesses. These networks will be supported by learning labs, such as Black Wall Street Forward, designed to generate new knowledge and insights to inform the work of the networks and to build the field.