From the calculated reversal of Gen. Sherman’s 1865 “40 acres and a mule” directive—which stripped away 400,000 acres of self-governing coastal land from newly freed people—to modern agricultural subsidy disparities, the document charts how systemic racism built the current economic divide. Today, with the wealth gap projected to take an astronomical 228 years to close without aggressive intervention, the resolution outlines a concrete framework for a national reckoning. By establishing clear eligibility guidelines, demanding stakes in emerging markets such as the cannabis industry, implementing tax-exempt land grants, and adjusting retirement-age benefits to account for health disparities, this proposal presents a comprehensive business plan for racial equity and structural atonement.
Check out these ongoing 10 Black Reparations initiatives across the country:
Anthony, now 19, was convicted June 9 of first-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Metcalf, who was fatally stabbed during an altercation at a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas, in April 2025. Anthony was tried as an adult even though he was only 17 at the time of the incident and claimed that he was acting in self-defense. The jury, however, deliberated for less than three hours before convicting him and later sentencing him to 35 years in prison, reports CBS News.
Following the verdict, GiveSendGo, a crowdsourcing platform that allows fundraising for those involved in criminal cases, confirmed that the “Help Karmelo Anthony Official Fund” had been closed since it was originally established to support Anthony’s legal costs, and the funds had already been distributed.
“The fundraiser was supported to support pre-trial needs, and those funds were disbursed over the last year,” read a statement to The NY Post. “With that stated purpose complete, the fundraiser has been closed.”
The fundraiser exceeded $630,000, with more than $4,000 in donations being made even after Anthony was convicted.
The platform added that a fundraiser does not constitute an endorsement of a defendant or their actions.
“Hosting a campaign has never been an endorsement of a person, their actions, their legal arguments, or their public statements,” GiveSendGo’s statement read. “It is not a declaration of innocence and it is not a political statement. GiveSendGo provides access to lawful fundraising, which we extend across the full spectrum of cases,” it added. “Our hearts are with Austin’s family, his twin brother, and everyone grieving a loss that no verdict can undo.”
Although the original campaign has been removed, Anthony’s legal team has reportedly begun the appeals process. In its statement, GiveSendGo indicated that the family could launch another fundraiser to help cover appellate legal expenses, provided it complies with the platform’s terms of service.
“The family will be able to set up a new campaign if they desire as long as it aligns with our terms of service,” the company said.
The case has fueled national debate over race, criminal justice, and online fundraising. Anthony’s supporters and family members have argued that the Black teenager faced disproportionate scrutiny for the killing of a white student. The controversy was further amplified by the composition of the jury, which did not include any Black jurors.
Mid-Career Women Are Leaving Corporate America To Build Their Own Paths
A growing number of women are walking away from traditional corporate careers and choosing entrepreneurship and independent work.
After years of climbing the corporate ladder, many mid-career women are deciding the next step in their careers isn’t another promotion—it’s ownership.
According to a recent Forbes report, women who once pursued executive titles and leadership roles within large corporations are increasingly leaving traditional workplaces to launch businesses, build consulting practices, and create independent careers that offer greater autonomy and control. The shift comes amid growing dissatisfaction with corporate structures that many women say have failed to deliver the power, influence, and security they were promised.
Channing Martin, a former global chief diversity and social impact officer, told Forbes that her perspective changed after losing her job following a corporate acquisition.
“I had to come to the realization and the acceptance that I wasn’t as powerful as I thought I was,” Martin said. “These corporate systems and structures aren’t designed to do what I want to do.”
For many women, the frustration goes beyond burnout. Forbes reports that Deloitte’s Women @ Work 2025 survey found only 5% of women expect to remain with their current employer for more than five years, while roughly four in 10 anticipate leaving within one to two years. Opportunities for advancement ranked as the top factor women said would help them succeed.
The changing economic landscape is also influencing career decisions. Forbes notes that employers announced approximately 1.2 million job cuts in 2025, while tech companies alone eliminated more than 52,000 positions during the first quarter of 2026 amid increased use of AI in operating systems.
As confidence in long-term corporate stability declines, more women are betting on themselves. According to data cited by Forbes, women launched 44% of new businesses in 2025, up significantly from 29% in 2019. Meanwhile, the number of independent professionals earning more than $100,000 annually has surged since 2020.
For former corporate leaders such as Toni Ronayne, founder of a collective for fractional chief executives, independence offers a sense of security that traditional employment no longer guarantees.
“Fractional leadership provides a certain level of autonomy,” Ronayne told Forbes. “You get to choose who you work with.”
Service Businesses Monthly Revenue Typically Stalls Under $100K And Here’s Why
The $100K ceiling Is an operations problem, not a demand problem
A plumber I work with in Tampa hit $84,000 in monthly revenue three months in a row last summer, then watched it slide back to $61,000 by October. He hadn’t lost customers. He’d lost track of which jobs were actually paying him. That story is closer to the norm than the exception. Only about 4% of all U.S. firms ever cross the $1 million annual revenue mark, which is roughly the $83K–$100K monthly threshold most service operators chase. The median revenue for employer firms sits around $400,000 per year, or about $33K/month. The gap between those numbers is where most service businesses live, and where most of them get stuck.
I’ve spent the last decade working alongside owners in HVAC, electrical, plumbing, fire service, locksmith, and lawn care. The patterns that cause businesses to plateau before six figures a month are remarkably consistent across trades, and almost none of them are about marketing or sales. They’re about operations: how jobs are scheduled, how labor is tracked, how invoices move, and how the owner spends their day. This piece walks through the technical reasons growth stalls at this revenue band, with specific attention to the realities Black founders in service trades face given tighter access to capital and thinner reserves to absorb operational mistakes.
The $100K Ceiling Is an Operations Problem, Not a Demand Problem
Most owners who stall between $50K and $100K a month assume they need more leads. When I dig into their numbers, the leads are usually fine. The conversion is fine. What’s broken is throughput, the number of completed, billed, and collected jobs per week.
A 2024 Jobber survey found that home service businesses using scheduling and dispatch software completed about 20% more jobs per day than those still booking manually. Verizon Connect’s 2024 fleet data showed route optimization cut driving time by up to 20% and lifted completed jobs by 15%. These are not small numbers. A three-truck HVAC shop running 12 jobs a day instead of 10, with an average ticket of $380, adds roughly $19,000 in monthly revenue from the same crew, the same trucks, and the same phone lines.
The technical bottleneck is usually one of three things: jobs scheduled too close together, jobs scheduled too far apart geographically, or technicians arriving without the parts and information needed to finish on the first visit. Each of these has a measurable cost. Across our customer base, HVAC contractors who switch from paper work orders to mobile-first dispatch typically see their first measurable gains in same-day job completion within the first 60-90 days, with the largest jump showing up in maintenance call volume rather than installs. The reason is structural: maintenance calls are short, predictable, and route-sensitive, so they benefit disproportionately from better sequencing.
Owners running paper work orders or text-message scheduling almost always underestimate the dead time between jobs. A dispatcher juggling 18 calls and a whiteboard cannot optimize route order in real time. By the time the schedule is built at 7 a.m., it’s already wrong.
Job Costing Is Where Margin Quietly Disappears
The second reason businesses stall is that revenue grows faster than the owner’s understanding of which jobs are profitable. Intuit’s 2024 Small Business Data Index found that 54% of service-based small businesses do not regularly calculate job- or project-level profitability. They rely on gut feel and quarterly tax returns. By the time the books close, the loss-making jobs are already done, and the underpriced contract is renewed for another year.
Labor is where the leak usually starts. A 2024 Service Council survey found that only 38% of field-service organizations track fully burdened labor costs at the work-order level. “Fully burdened” means wage plus payroll taxes, plus workers’ comp, plus vehicle cost allocation, plus benefits. If you’re pricing off a raw hourly rate of $32 when the loaded cost is $54, every job is closer to break-even than your quote sheet suggests.
This matters more now than it did five years ago. BLS data show hourly compensation in service-providing industries rose 12.7% from Q1 2021 to Q1 2024, and that wage pressure is not reversing. If your job costing was loose in 2021, the same looseness in 2026 is the difference between a 22% gross margin and a 9% one.
What to track at the work-order level, at minimum:
Total technician hours on site, including drive time
Material cost pulled from actuals, not estimates
Subcontractor or helper cost, if applicable
Travel cost allocated by mile or by hour
Any callback or warranty time billed back to the original job
Without these five numbers per job, you cannot tell which customer segments, which job types, or which technicians are actually making you money. You’re flying on revenue alone, and revenue lies.
The Reporting Gap: Operating Blind at $60K–$80K a Month
Around the $60K to $80K monthly band, complexity outruns the owner’s ability to hold everything in their head. This is the point where most operators need dashboards, and most don’t have them. A 2024 Xero survey found that only 39% of small businesses use any form of business dashboard or KPI tracking, and adoption is lower among firms under $1M in revenue.
The metrics that actually predict whether a service business will break through $100K/month are not the ones owners typically watch:
Revenue per technician per day, not revenue per month. Monthly numbers hide which weeks were strong and why.
First-time-fix rate. Every callback is a job you’re paying for twice.
Days to invoice, measured from job completion to invoice sent. Two days versus nine days is the difference between healthy AR and chronic cash crunch.
Days to pay, measured from invoice sent to payment received.
Dispatcher load, meaning jobs scheduled per dispatcher per day. There’s a ceiling, usually around 35 to 45 jobs per dispatcher, beyond which scheduling quality collapses.
McKinsey’s 2023 research on service operations found companies using real-time performance dashboards improved productivity by 10–15% and customer satisfaction by 20–30%. The mechanism is simple. When you can see the dispatcher load climbing on a Tuesday afternoon, you can shift two jobs to Wednesday before the day falls apart. When you cannot see it until Friday’s weekly meeting, the damage is already done.
Deloitte’s 2024 SMB finance study found that 45% of growing small businesses still rely primarily on spreadsheets, and those firms reported twice the rate of unexpected cash shortfalls. A spreadsheet is fine until it isn’t. The crossover usually happens around 200-300 jobs per month.
Cash Flow Friction: The Slow Bleed That Caps Growth
Revenue growth without cash flow discipline is how owners end up with a great year on paper and an empty operating account in December. QuickBooks research found that U.S. small businesses carry an average of $78,355 in outstanding invoices, with 48% of invoices overdue. For a service business doing $80K/month, that is roughly a full month of revenue sitting in receivables.
This problem is sharper for Black-owned firms. A 2023 Hello Alice survey reported that more than 60% of Black small-business owners experienced late payments from customers, compared with 48% overall. When that late-payment friction stacks on top of the Federal Reserve finding that only 35% of Black-owned employer firms received all the financing they sought, compared with 49% of white-owned firms, the working capital squeeze becomes structural. You cannot hire the fourth technician you need to grow because the cash to fund their first two payroll cycles is parked in unpaid 60-day invoices.
The technical fixes are well understood. Billtrust’s 2024 analysis found that e-invoicing and digital payments reduced days sales outstanding by an average of 6 days for SMEs versus paper-based invoicing. Six days is not glamorous, but at $80K/month in billings, that’s roughly $16,000 in cash pulled forward each month, every month.
Specific moves that compress the cash cycle:
Invoice from the field at job completion, not from the office that evening. Same-day invoicing changes payment behavior.
Offer card and ACH on every invoice, not just on request. Friction kills collection rates.
Set automated reminders at day 7, day 14, and day 21. Most overdue invoices are not disputes; they’re simply forgotten.
Require deposits on jobs above a defined threshold, often $1,500 or $2,000 depending on the trade.
The estimate-to-cash cycle matters too. We’ve observed across contractors using our platform that electricians running residential service work tend to convert estimates to signed jobs at meaningfully higher rates when the estimate reaches the customer on the same day as the site visit, rather than 24-48 hours later. The mechanism is psychological: the homeowner is still in the mindset that the work needs to be done. By Tuesday morning, three other priorities have crowded out the electrical panel upgrade.
The Owner Bottleneck: When the Business Cannot Grow Past You
The hardest constraint to fix is the owner’s calendar. The Service Council’s 2024 report found that 52% of small field-service organizations have owners who still perform service work themselves at least three days per week. If you’re billable three days a week, you have two days for everything else: hiring, sales, vendor relationships, AR, compliance, equipment maintenance, and strategy. That math does not produce a $100K/month business.
The transition out of the truck is brutal, especially for owners who built the business on their personal craft and reputation. But the data on what makes the transition possible is consistent: documented processes. A 2023 SCORE survey found that 66% of small businesses without documented standard operating procedures reported “difficulty delegating” as a top challenge, versus 37% of those with SOPs. Process documentation is unglamorous, but it’s what enables the second and third technicians to produce work that meets your standards without your physical supervision.
There are specific verticals where account structure does more for growth than any sales activity. Across our customer base, traffic control and fire service companies serving repeat commercial accounts get more leverage from structured client records, site contacts, access details, and contract terms than from any sales-focused feature, since growth in these verticals is account-led. The pattern is the same in property management contracting and in commercial pool service. If your growth comes from doing the next job at an existing site, the system that wins is the one that captures every detail about that site so any technician can show up and execute.
Burnout is the other side of the owner bottleneck. A 2024 Small Business Majority survey found that 52% of owners reported feeling burned out, with 35% saying they had delayed growth plans due to stress, and higher rates among Black and Latino owners. A burned-out owner does not make good operational decisions, does not invest in systems, and does not delegate. The plateau holds.
The Capital and Technology Gap That Makes This Harder
Black founders building service businesses face a tighter version of each of the problems above. The Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances showed median wealth for Black families at $44,900, compared with $285,000 for white families. That gap is not abstract. It’s the difference between being able to float a $40,000 payroll for two weeks during a slow January and having to factor receivables at 18% to keep the lights on.
Technology adoption also lags. A 2023 NMSDC report found that only 41% of Black-owned small businesses reported using industry-specific software, compared with 61% of non-minority peers. Some of that gap is access. Some of it is vendor outreach. Some of it is the rational caution of an owner who has seen too many tools sold on hype and abandoned within a year. The result is that operators who would benefit most from scheduling, costing, and reporting systems are often the last to adopt them, and the plateau holds longer than it should.
Two practical observations from my own work. First, the highest-leverage technology investment for most service businesses under $100K/month is the one that compresses the invoice-to-cash cycle. It pays for itself in weeks, not years, because it directly addresses the working capital constraint. Second, the second-highest-leverage investment is whatever forces the owner to review job-level profitability weekly rather than monthly. The behavior change matters more than the specific tool.
There are also vertical-specific patterns worth knowing. In our customer base, locksmith operators handling automotive lockouts almost universally cite GPS-verified arrival timestamps as their most-used feature when pushing back on chargebacks and disputed service calls. Based on Field Promax usage patterns, fire service companies running quarterly and annual inspection routes get the most leverage out of recurring work order templates, since the same site can generate 4-12 scheduled visits per year with near-identical task lists. These are not generic productivity gains. They’re trade-specific operational realities that determine whether a given system actually moves the business forward.
What to Reflect On
The $100K/month ceiling is not a marketing problem and rarely a demand problem. It’s the point at which the operational habits that built the business to $50K start to fail, and the owner has to choose between working harder within the existing system or rebuilding the system itself. The owners I watch break through that ceiling are the ones who stop measuring success by monthly revenue and start measuring it by revenue per technician per day, days to invoice, days to pay, and how many days a week they personally need to be in the field. Those four numbers, tracked weekly, predict the next twelve months better than any sales forecast.
About the Author
Joy Gomez is an engineer, process automation expert, and the Founder of Field Promax. Known for his technical expertise and commitment to field service innovation, Joy writes about transforming traditional business models into paperless, efficient operations. He is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt based in Rochester, Minnesota, dedicated to helping field professionals work smarter through better technology. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Time-Tested Advice Entrepreneurs Need To Hear — To Succeed!
It’s a strategy Nicholas Dillon used since starting his business.... and you get it for free.
When wellness experts and counselor Nicholas Dillon, CEO of Believe Wellness Center, sat down with BLACK ENTERPRISE Senior Digital Editor Sidnee Douyon during the 2023 XCEL Summit for Men Spotlight series, he said one of the secrets to his success as an entrepreneur, coach, and mental wellness counselor was making sure his business was diversified with multiple streams of income. It was advice Dillon received early in his career, and he stressed that to the men attending the 2023 XCEL Summit for Men (then known as the Black Men XCEL Summit). It’s sound advice he mentioned three years ago, and it’s still true today. As we approach the 10th anniversary of the XCEL Summit for Men, BE echoes Dillon’s words of wisdom to anyone on the verge of starting a business. Take a moment to hear an excerpt from Dillon’s Spotlight interview in this accompanying short video clip.
FT. WORTH, TX - SEPTEMBER 02: Colorado Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders before playing the TCU Horned Frogs at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Ft. Worth September 02, 2023. (Photo by Andy Cross/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Colorado Overpaid Deion Sanders And Lost $1.2M On 2024 Alamo Bowl
This fiscal oversight comes at a critical time for the university’s operations.
University of Colorado administrators made a significant payment error involving head coach Deion Sanders after misinterpreting postseason compensation guidelines.
A June 4, 2026, audit shows Colorado overpaid Sanders by $50,000 after the 2024 season because officials misclassified the Alamo Bowl as a “New Year’s Six” game.
Sanders was contractually entitled to $150,000 for a regular bowl and $200,000 for a New Year’s Six appearance. Colorado paid the higher bonus, although the Alamo Bowl does not qualify as a “New Year’s Six” game.
This overpayment reflects broader fiscal mismanagement within the Buffaloes’ athletic department. According to an audit obtained by USA TODAY Sports, Colorado lost $1.23 million on the 2024 Alamo Bowl mainly because the department lacked an event budget to manage spending.
According to a report by the Colorado Office of the State Auditor, the audit recommends that the University of Colorado establish clear approval processes for postseason compensation, require that budgets be prepared in advance of major events, and implement real-time expense tracking for these activities. The report also advises regular financial oversight and the use of automated payment controls to ensure contract compliance and prevent future administrative errors.
A report from the Colorado General Assembly found that total revenue from the game and related events amounted to $2.97 million, while expenses totaled $4.21 million, and the transportation of 210 band and spirit members cost $945,053. According to the most recent NCAA Agreed-Upon Procedures report for the University of Colorado–Boulder, no specific details are provided regarding travel expenses or unauthorized discretionary adjustments involving assistant coaches and support staff.
The report did not identify intentional misconduct but emphasized the need to standardize postseason compensation policies and strengthen oversight. The audit warns that, without corrective action, payment errors and deficits will likely continue.
This pattern of excess compensation continues. For the second consecutive year, Colorado paid Sanders beyond his contractual requirements. After his 2023 debut season, the university awarded Sanders a discretionary $250,000 bonus, citing the significant national media attention and marketing value generated by his “Coach Prime” persona.
This fiscal oversight comes at a critical time for the university’s operations. Colorado’s athletic department faces a projected $27 million deficit for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2026.
These budget challenges reflect broader trends in major college athletics. Like many programs, Colorado faces financial pressures from rising executive and coach salaries and a new industry-wide requirement to pay $20.5 million annually to student-athletes under revenue-sharing models. Peer institutions such as Arizona State and UCLA have also reported multimillion-dollar athletic deficits and similar difficulties controlling spending, showing that Colorado’s situation is part of a larger issue across college athletics.
Despite these financial challenges, Sanders signed a contract extension after the 2024 season that nearly doubled his compensation to over $10 million annually. However, the team’s on-field results have been mixed. The Buffaloes finished 9-4 in 2024 but dropped to a 3-9 record in 2025 after the departures of quarterback Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter.
In response, Colorado’s athletic management committed to removing ambiguous language from future postseason contracts and routing all event budgets through the CU Boulder Business, Finance, and Infrastructure Office for oversight, as recommended by the audit. The university stated that this office will conduct quarterly reviews of all postseason budgets and compensation agreements, with compliance officers responsible for monitoring adherence to contract protocols.
Jamaican Marketing Executive Netania Mundell Turns NYU Degree Into Global Brand Success
The Jamaican-born marketer reflects on overcoming self-doubt, earning a degree from NYU, and helping lead digital campaigns for major brands like Guinness and Smirnoff Ice
Jamaican-born marketing professional Netania Mundell is proving that career pivots can open doors to unexpected opportunities.
The 29-year-old recently graduated from New York University with a master’s degree in Integrated Marketing, adding another milestone to a journey that has taken her from studying accounting in Jamaica to helping shape marketing strategies for some of the world’s most recognizable consumer brands. Today, Mundell serves as an associate of digital activation at Diageo, where she works on brands including Guinness and Smirnoff Ice across North America, according to the Jamaica Observer.
Mundell says her path into marketing was less about abandoning one dream and more about discovering where her talents naturally aligned. Her current role combines her strengths as “the strategist, the storyteller, the cultural observer, the creative,” while allowing her to bring a distinctly Jamaican perspective to global campaigns, she told the Jamaica Observer.
“I am very unserious in the best way,” Mundell said, describing the upbeat personality that helped her build an online following and eventually launch the Netschat podcast after graduating from university.
Raised in Portmore, St. Catherine, Jamaica, Mundell credits her family, especially her father, for encouraging her ambitions. Her experiences as a content creator also helped sharpen the cultural awareness and storytelling instincts she now applies in the corporate world. In an era when brands are expected to be “culturally aware, digitally fluent, and emotionally intelligent,” those skills have become invaluable assets.
Mundell’s journey has not been without challenges. After relocating to the United States in 2022, she battled self-doubt before beginning her studies at NYU. She questioned whether she belonged in such a competitive environment before reminding herself that she had earned her place.
Today, she manages marketing initiatives for Guinness North America and Smirnoff Ice North America while continuing to draw inspiration from her Caribbean roots. Looking ahead, Mundell said she sees her future at the intersection of creativity, strategy, and human behavior—using marketing not simply to sell products, but to create meaningful connections between brands and consumers.
Most Adults Don’t Believe The American Dream Is Attainable As Housing, Healthcare, And Living Costs Soar
A new survey finds that more than half of Americans believe the American dream is out of reach for most people due to rising costs and economic barriers.
A majority of Americans believe the American dream is slipping further out of reach, according to a new survey conducted by CNBC and SurveyMonkey.
The survey of 4,130 U.S. adults found that 51% of respondents say the American dream is “out of reach for most people right now,” while 45% believe it is attainable for only some people. Just 6% said it remains accessible to everyone.
When asked what defines the American dream today, 72% of those surveyed said they would need to achieve financial stability to feel they had attained the dream. Respondents pointed to several obstacles, with roughly 4 in 5 Americans identifying the cost of living as a major barrier. Meanwhile, 3 in 5 cited rising home prices, along with healthcare expenses and low wages, as frequently mentioned challenges.
The findings reflect a broader decline in confidence about economic mobility in the U.S. Elizabeth Suhay, a political scientist at American University, told CNBC that Americans are increasingly “less likely to believe the American economy is meritocratic” and less likely to view it as a system that “delivers economic success to a typical hardworking person.” She added that fewer people believe lower-income Americans can successfully work their way up the economic ladder than in previous decades.
The survey also found notable differences in how Americans define success based on their political affiliation. Seventy percent of Republican-leaning respondents said the American dream is within reach for most or all people in the U.S. today, whereas just 26% of Democratic-leaning respondents agreed. Republicans also stated that the dream is attainable through hard work, while Democratic-leaning respondents were more likely to cite luck as a contributing factor. Furthermore, Republicans were more likely to associate achieving the American dream with homeownership, marriage, and having children, while Democrats placed greater emphasis on career fulfillment, higher education, and having the financial freedom to pursue personal interests.
New Bayard Rustin Institute Will Train Future Civic Leaders
This a permanent educational initiative aimed at teaching future generations the organizing strategies and principles of nonviolent activism.
The National Civil Rights Museum announced on June 9 the launch of the Bayard Rustin Institute. This is a permanent educational initiative aimed at teaching future generations the organizing strategies and principles of nonviolent activism championed by the late civil rights leader, Action 5 News reported.
The institute, housed at the Memphis museum, will use historical records, educational programming, and leadership training to examine Rustin’s influence on the Civil Rights Movement and contemporary social justice efforts.
Museum President Dr. Russ Wigginton said the institute is intended to serve as more than a tribute to Rustin’s legacy.
“The Bayard Rustin Institute is not a commemoration, but a blueprint for the tools Rustin used to accelerate change,” Wigginton said, according to the outlet.
The institute is centered on the museum’s recently acquired Rustin Collection, which contains correspondence, documents, and other records detailing Rustin’s work as a civil rights organizer and human rights advocate. Museum officials said the archive will be accessible to researchers, students, and educators.
Rustin, a close adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., played a key role in advancing nonviolent protest strategies during the Civil Rights Movement. He is widely recognized as the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, a task he completed in less than two months. Museum leaders have said Rustin’s contributions were often overlooked because he was openly gay.
Several programs are scheduled to begin this year under the institute’s umbrella.
Among them is the Rustin Social Change Fellowship, a six-month leadership program for young people focused on nonviolent activism and community organizing. The institute will also partner with MICAH, a Memphis-based advocacy organization, to incorporate Rustin’s organizing principles into civic engagement and leadership training efforts.
In addition, the museum plans to launch the Rustin Lecture Series in fall 2026. The program will feature discussions with scholars, activists, elected officials, faith leaders, and others examining Rustin’s influence on modern movements focused on democracy, civil rights, and social change.
Museum officials also announced plans for a traveling exhibition exploring Rustin’s life and legacy, which is scheduled to debut in 2027.
Meta’s $115M Workforce Training Initiative Offers Education In Skilled Trade To Build Data Centers
The program, called America's Workforce Academy, will launch in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and Texas.
Meta announced a $115 million workforce training initiative that will provide free skilled-trades education and employment opportunities for participants in four states as the company expands the infrastructure needed to support artificial intelligence technologies, Fox Business reports.
What is Meta’s new workforce initiative?
The program, called America’s Workforce Academy, will launch in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and Texas. Meta said the initiative is intended to help address growing demand for workers needed to construct and maintain data centers and related facilities tied to the company’s AI investments.
“The AI revolution is bringing change but also historic opportunities. Skilled workers electrified rural America one pole at a time. They manned the factories that built the arsenal that won World War II. Now a new generation will pour the foundations and lay the fiber that secures American strength in this new age,” Dina Powell McCormick, Meta president and vice-chairman, said according to the outlet.
What trades are taught in America’s Workforce Academy?
Participants will receive specialized data center training in four core technical trades:
Fiber-optic installation
Electrical work
Welding
Plumbing
According to Meta, graduates will earn industry-recognized credentials through the National Center for Construction Education and Research and will be connected with employment opportunities supporting data center construction projects.
The announcement comes as technology companies continue investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence infrastructure, escalating demand for skilled construction and technical workers. Experts have warned that labor shortages could complicate efforts to build new facilities as companies race to expand computing capacity.
How much does the program cost?
Meta said the academy will cover training costs and provide support services intended to help participants complete the program. The company did not immediately disclose how many workers it expects to train through the initiative.
The program will be developed in partnership with organizations including the National Center for Construction Education and Research, the National Urban League, the Associated Builders and Contractors, and commercial real estate services firm CBRE. Meta said the partners will assist with recruiting participants, delivering training, and connecting graduates with employers.
Company officials said the effort is part of a broader strategy to build a pipeline of workers capable of supporting the rapid growth of AI-related infrastructure across the United States.
