This week on The Urban Business Roundtable, UBR Contributor Renita D. Young speaks with Jessy Blanchard, the founder of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Jessy Cupcake Company, a web-based cupcakery business specializing in healthy baked-goods alternatives. Prior to launching her business last year, Blanchard began experimenting with all-natural low-calorie recipes in an attempt to satisfy her family’s sweet tooth, while maintaining a commitment to nutrition. Since then, Jessy Cupcake Company has gained clients including the New York Urban League Young Professionals and Tea by Tiffany. Blanchard joins the Roundtable to share her recipe for launching a promising new enterprise.
Also, UBR Contributor Samantha Pass talks with marketing pro Camille Evans, the founder and CEO of New York-based CME Management Group. Evans, who began her career in artist management and has worked with R&B and hip-hop notables including Outkast, Toni Braxton and T.I., joins the Roundtable to share how entrepreneurs can secure sponsorships to support their events and other initiatives.
In my “Alfred’s Notepad” segment, I make the my case for why we need to get serious about investing in small business success, especially as we are counting on entrepreneurs to provide the jobs and innovation to necessary to fuel our nation’s economy. We need to find better ways to provide the right kinds of capital, to the right entrepreneurs, at the right stage of their businesses development. We also need to get serious about entrepreneurship education, particularly in our public schools.
And finally, every week on UBR, you’ll get motivation and inspiration from author and entrepreneurial icon Farrah Gray, a weekly wrap-up of business news from USA Today business correspondent Charisse Jones, our Patient Investor Report from Khoa X. Ho of Ariel Investments and key economic intelligence for small business owners from our UBR economists Derrick Collins and Rasheed Carter.
If you have a question you want answered or a topic you want addressed on The Urban Business Roundtable, connect with me at BE Insider, the social media network for people who are serious about Black Enterprise. You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook.
Alfred Edmond Jr. is the senior VP/editor-at-large of Black Enterprise and the host of the Urban Business Roundtable, a weekly radio show, sponsored by Ariel Investments, airing CST Wednesdays at 8:30 a.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. on WVON-AM 1690, the Talk of Chicago. You can also listen live online at WVON.com. Check back each week for UBR Spotlight, which features additional resources, advice and information from and about the topics, entrepreneurs and experts featured on the show.