• Career

by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors

March 26, 2023

Here’s One Easy Way to Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader in Your Industry

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If you want to establish yourself as an industry leader, guest posting could be a powerful tool in your arsenal. You can demonstrate your authority and build trust with potential customers by sharing your expertise and offering valuable insights to a targeted audience. Guest posting helps you expand your reach, attract new audiences and boost your credibility and authority in your field.

Guest posts, also known as bylined articles, are highly effective strategies in your public relations and marketing campaigns. A guest post involves you authoring an article about something that you are an expert on and having it published on a publication’s site. There are many different ways that guest posting can help drive your various business goals. Here are just some of the most common:

• Increased brand recognition and awareness: One of the main benefits of publishing guest posts is the increased exposure it provides for your brand. When you publish an article on another site, you have the opportunity to reach new audiences, attract new followers and ultimately gain more potential customers.
• Establishing credibility: By publishing guest posts, you can share your expert insights, tips and resources with a broader audience. This presents an opportunity to establish credibility and trust with potential customers, increasing the chances of them doing business with your company.
• Improved SEO: By including backlinks to your website within a guest post, you can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking. Backlinks from high-quality websites are a critical factor in improving your website’s visibility on search engines and encouraging traffic to your website.
• Strengthening partnerships: Collaborating with other websites and industry experts can help strengthen partnerships and potentially lead to new business opportunities. By contributing guest posts to other websites, you can establish relationships with the site’s editors and potentially collaborate on future projects or initiatives.

How to write a successful guest post

Step 1: Identify your audience. Knowing your target audience is crucial to creating a successful bylined article because it allows you to select a topic relevant to their interests and provides value to them. To find the appropriate audience, you should research and identify a publication that caters to that particular group.

Step 2: Choose a relevant and compelling topic. Choose a timely, informative and exciting topic for the publication’s audience. Your article should be relevant to your industry and provide value to readers. Choosing a compelling theme can entice readers to click on your article and read more. Expert tip: Scan different magazines to get an idea of what types of articles people are consuming and identify a topic on which you could provide the most expert commentary but hasn’t been covered much.

Step 3: Create a clear structure. Your article should have clear formatting that makes it easy for readers to follow. To improve the readability of your content and keep readers engaged, consider breaking up the text into smaller, digestible chunks. You can achieve this using subheadings, bullet points and short paragraphs. Expert tip: You can use services like Jasper AI or ChatGPT to help create your article’s outline, giving you a good place to start.

• Business

by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors

March 26, 2023

Is Your Startup Safe? Here Are 7 Reminders On How To Protect It

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There’s a lot of moving parts when it comes to starting a business. And always the topic of security will come up.

Security is one of those things that has been discussed in detail, but to arm your organization, it’s about making sure that you understand what threats you are up against. It requires a number of physical, digital, and mental security measures to protect your startup; here are some tips that can help you protect your company and promote longevity.

Proper identification

If you want to secure your premises, you’ve got to look from the outside in. Exterior security comes in many different ways, like security cameras, security guards, or fencing, but one of the simplest methods you can use to prevent any intrusion is to issue company ID badges for every member of staff. There are a number of external components that you can leverage, but you must think about proper identification as being a simple notion that underpins your entire business.

Communicating properly

It is essential to make sure your employees are knowledgeable in basic security that can minimize threats. Something like phishing scams is still commonplace, and one of the biggest reasons that companies fall foul of these is because they’re not communicating security measures in simple language. When we talk about security and compliance, we can easily start to overcomplicate the language, and providing information in the most basic ways that everybody can understand means you are not suffering from oversimplification but are benefiting from over-communication.

Security is something we must work hard at for our business and of the major problems that can be endemic in startups is using overly complicated language, not just in security but in every other aspect of our business. Ensuring we talk about things clearly and in language that everybody understands can get our point across so the message will spread further.

Appropriate surveillance

Whether inside or outside of your business, you can benefit from surveillance like CCTV, but there’s more to it than just the most up-to-date security system. Surveillance is also about providing deterrence. Potential intruders will weigh up a location to see if it is worth breaking into before anything else. While a security camera can be enough to deter a thief, there are other methods, like clear signage and a professional security firm, that provide reassurance. Surveillance is easier to achieve than ever, as long as you ensure your physical surveillance is more robust you should have no problem protecting your assets.

Internal physical startup security

The topic of security is not just about the exterior. Ensuring that we go beyond ID badges and provide greater access to certain members of the business (and limited access to others) is about a logical approach to investing in security. There are a number of methods beyond ID badges you can take advantage of; physical barriers are one approach, but you can also limit access to more sensitive locations, like data centers, where certain members of staff would not be able to infiltrate. While this can go against the grain of transparency in an organization, if you are looking to protect a number of physical assets from within, you have to implement greater supervision. One of the more common methods of theft comes from within.

Understanding your employees can steal too

When we place a lot of trust in our employees and someone breaks that trust, it can hurt. Breaking trust can make us feel more inclined to increase our security measures. This is partly why simple internal security measures like a security camera can do a lot, but it’s also about making sure that you recognize the signs of a fraudulent employee.

Backing up data

Regular backups are a simple thing but are critical to disaster recovery. The act of regular backups to a cloud system is one approach. However, if you are not utilizing the cloud yet and are still using hard drives, these can be physically stolen. Keeping them under lock and key is one simple approach. On the other hand, you should implement company policies that stipulate backups need to be stored securely.

Embedding a culture of startup security

To increase your security measures, you need to prioritize a security-oriented culture. Many startups are aware of the importance of culture. They see it as a way to increase trust and help onboard new team members. Whenever somebody comes into your business, this is the ideal opportunity to reiterate your security-based objectives. When you start to bring new team members on board, you can start bringing in new rules. You can also start fine-tuning those security practices. We should take advantage of bringing in new practices especially if we found our security methods have been underwhelming in the past.

It is such a simple thing. When you start to bring newer team members on board, you can give them greater understanding in what makes a more secure business. The foresight to adopt new measures and adapt to older ones will provide greater reassurance. A culture of security within your business has nothing to do with your budget or your employee skill set, but it is one component that greatly improves a business in subtle ways.

• Career

by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors

March 26, 2023

Hans Dorsinville Appointed Senior Vice President, Global Creative, BALMAIN BEAUTY

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BALMAIN announced the appointment of Hans Dorsinville to Senior Vice President (SVP), Global Creative, BALMAIN BEAUTY, effective January 2023. Hans will be based in New York and report directly to Olivier Rousteing, Creative Director of BALMAIN.

In his position, Hans will work closely with the BALMAIN and BALMAIN BEAUTY teams, including Estée Lauder Companies’ (NYSE: EL) executives Guillaume Jesel, President, Global Brands, TOM FORD BEAUTY, BALMAIN BEAUTY and Luxury Business Development, and Nathalie Berger Duquene, Senior Vice President (SVP), Global General Manager, BALMAIN BEAUTY. As SVP, Global Creative, Hans will be responsible for overseeing the full creative spectrum for BALMAIN BEAUTY including image, concepts, strategy, and alignment of brand voice with the fashion house. He will work with the team to ensure a cohesive experience across all touchpoints of the consumer journey.

Guillaume said, “Hans is an exceptionally talented and innovative creative leader and I am delighted that he is joining the team to bring Olivier Rousteing’s groundbreaking vision for BALMAIN BEAUTY to life.”

Hans brings more than 25 years of creative experience to BALMAIN BEAUTY, having served in leadership roles across leading fashion, branding and advertising agencies, and while in-house at Donna Karan. Most recently, Hans held the role of Chief Creative Officer at Gotham where he led the strategic creative work across several large-scale fashion and beauty brands. Prior to Gotham, Hans was Chief Creative Officer at Select World, following more than ten years at Laird + Partners, where he was a founding partner. As Executive Vice President (EVP), Senior Group Creative Director at Laird + Partners, he led brand concepting, art direction for digital, print packaging design, merchandising and fashion shows for clients across luxury fragrance, high jewelry, and fashion.

Hans’s rise in fashion and beauty creative leadership began when he joined Donna Karan’s in-house creative agency in the early 1990s as Junior Designer. Assuming roles of increasing responsibility, Hans stepped into the position of EVP, developing campaigns for the Collection and the DKNY bridge line. At Donna Karan he worked across all fashion and licensees, including fragrance and skincare. Hans is a graduate of Parsons School of Design in New York and Paris.

Hans is known for championing diversity, inclusion and empowerment across his work and in the fashion and beauty industries. In 2018, Hans founded the Creative Coalition for Diversity in an effort to expand opportunities for a more diverse and inclusive group of creatives of color.

“We are thrilled that Hans will be taking on this creative leadership role, partnering with Olivier on the creative of BALMAIN BEAUTY. Hans’s deep and tenured experience in fashion and beauty and his reputation for producing bold and innovative creative make him ideally suited to take on this role. His unique strengths will reinforce the infinite possibilities of this exciting new luxury beauty brand,” Nathalie said.

In September 2022, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. and BALMAIN announced a license agreement to collaboratively develop, produce, and distribute an innovative line of beauty products that will speak to luxury consumers around the world: BALMAIN BEAUTY. The collaboration is expected to launch in fall 2024, with the goal to transform the luxury and couture beauty world through exceptional design, singular craftsmanship, and an unyielding commitment to innovation.

This news first appeared on businesswire.com.

• News

by Booker Jones

March 26, 2023

Teen Accused Of Paralyzing Woman During Robbery Has Bail Reduced

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A Houston teenager accused of paralyzing a woman has had his bail significantly reduced by a judge. 

According to ABC 13, Joseph Harrell was arrested for robbery after he allegedly followed a woman for 24 miles and slammed her to the ground before taking her money. Initially, Harrell’s bail was set at $200,000. However, he was released on $100,000. 

​​”While on bond for Unlawful Carrying a Handgun, [Harrell] stole money from and assaulted the [victim], causing the [victim] broken ribs, a fractured spine, and paralysis from below the arms, which is serious bodily injury,” prosecutors wrote, according to Fox News.

Despite the prosecutors’ plea, Judge Kristin Guiney lowered Harrell’s bail to $100,000. 

“I requested a bond considerably lower than what Judge Guiney actually set and informed her that the client’s family was currently unable to make his bond,” Catherine Evans, Harrell’s lawyer, said to Fox News. “Additionally, it was confirmed that bond conditions are in place that would place Mr. Harrell on 24 hour house arrest and require him to wear a GPS monitor should family members be able to post sufficient bonds at some point in the future.”

ABC 13 also reports that Harrell was the only person caught on video, but police also charged Zy’Nika Woods with robbery. 

According to ABC 13, Woods was accused of being the getaway driver. ABC 13 also reported that Woods also drove the car that followed the victim, Nhung Truong, to the bank. 

Truong suffered a fractured spine, broken ribs and is paralyzed from the waist down. 

While some Houston natives believe the crime is increasing, Houston officials claim otherwise.

Houstonpublicmedia.org reported that, according to the the Houston Police department, “the latest crime analysis for last year shows overall violent crime was down 8% and the murder rate was down 9% compared to 2021.”

Let’s see how the rest of the year goes in Houston.

Today marks the midway point and a heightened call for support of the Paine College ‘Growing Paine’ fundraising efforts led by President Cheryl Evans Jones, PhD. During Women’s History Month, which coincides with the College’s capital campaign, Jones and her team have doubled down as fierce advocates for women’s rights, with a keen focus on Paine’s contributions to education and equity for all. Located in Augusta, Georgia, the historically black college (HBCU) was founded in 1882 and currently has nearly three hundred full-time students enrolled.

Nearly $600,000 has been raised since the campaign launched. Individual and institutional support is requested to help ensure the College meets its $6M campaign goal and continues to thrive. Funds raised during the campaign will support the College’s five key strategic areas including:

• Curriculum expansion and realignment
• Enrollment growth
• Faculty growth and development
• Improving student housing to support and facilitate a modern living and learning community; and
• Increasing scholarship awards

Anchored by a strong board of trustees and a committed faculty and staff, the college’s leadership is ramping up its call for support from the Beloved Community, including HBCU alumni, foundations, celebrities, corporations and individuals across the nation.  All organizations with a commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are encouraged to include the ‘Growing Paine’ campaign in their philanthropic plan.

“I’m extremely thankful for my experience at Paine College. It equipped me with the education and mindset to forge ahead in life,” said Michael Thurmond, chairman of the Paine College Board of Trustees and Chief Operating Officer of DeKalb County, Georgia. “I am challenging my network to join me by giving and encouraging others in their networks to do the same. Our 60-day goal is within reach, but it will certainly take a village to help Paine College build and grow.”

March is Women’s History Month, which brings into focus the legacy of Jones and other distinguished women across the HBCU ecosystem. Purple is recognized as the international color of women and gender equality. It is also the dominant color for Paine College which is presently comprised of a majority of women students (57%) and graduates (52%).

In 2019, Jones was charged to lead Paine’s turnaround. Since that time, she has achieved an array of successes such as achieving institutional accreditation by the Transnational Association of Christian College and Schools (TRACS), approval to offer distance education by TRACS, approval for participation in Division I South of the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA), partnering with the Augusta National Golf Club which established two endowed scholarships in the name of Lee Elder and a women’s golf team for the first time in the College’s history, a grant in the amount of $1.4 million from Augusta–Richmond County Commission to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, and accreditation of the Department of Business Administration by the Accreditation Council of Business School Programs (ACBSP).

Several policy efforts are underway to help ensure the financial health and long-term viability of Paine and other HBCUs including the current Georgia House Bill 235. While historic land grants and other government programs have proved helpful in the past, the vital need for the ongoing support of HBCUs, like Paine, remains.

“Paine College supports the bill introduced as Georgia H.B. 235, not simply for our institution, but for all HBCUs located here. We are hopeful that it will receive a vote of confidence and pass,” said Paine College President Cheryl Evans Jones, PhD. “In the interim, our students, faculty and staff need financial assistance. Paine is not only educating our next generation of leaders but also providing much-needed jobs and a hub for innovation to the surrounding community.”

There are currently more than 100 HBCUs serving more than 228,000 students throughout the US at both public and private colleges. To donate, volunteer or learn more about the “Growing Paine” campaign, please visit https://www.paine.edu/web/giving/giving.

This news first appeared on prnewswire.com.

• Business

by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors

March 26, 2023

Army Veteran Turned Serial Entrepreneur Launches CEO Camp to Empower Micro Business Owners Across the Nation

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Danielle Johnson, founder and CEO of The Platinum Gallery, a Black-owned publishing and consulting company she founded in 2012, is excited to announce her upcoming CEO camp. The camp is designed to provide valuable resources and tools for entrepreneurs looking to take their businesses to the next level. It will be held from April 21-24, 2023.

• News

by Booker Jones

March 26, 2023

A New Orleans Teens Makes Impressive Mathematical Discovery

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The ingenuity of children has always been inspiring. New Orleans teenagers Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson’s ingenuity enabled them to figure out a mathematical equation that had seemingly been impossible. 

According to 4WWL, Johnson and Jackson demonstrated that Pythagoras’ Theorem can be proven with trigonometry. The high school students presented their findings at the American Mathematical Society’s Annual Southeastern Conference.

“It’s really an unparalleled feeling, honestly, because there’s just nothing like being able to do something that people don’t think young people can do,” Johnson told 4WWL. “A lot of times you see this stuff, you don’t see kids like us doing it.”

4WWL reported that mathematicians have tried to prove that Pythagoras’ Theorem can be proven with trigonometry for 2,000 years. A teacher challenged Johnson and Jackson to prove the theory. 

“Our Slogan is ‘No Excellence Without Hard Labor.’ So, they definitely push us,” Johnson said. 

Jackson added: “We have really great teachers.”  

The Grio reports that “Johnson and Jackson’s abstract adds that the book with the largest known collection of proofs for the theorem – Elisha Loomis’s The Pythagorean Proposition – “flatly states that ‘there are no trigonometric proofs because all the fundamental formulae of trigonometry are themselves based upon the truth of the Pythagorean theorem.’”

Essence reports that Johnson and Jackson will study environmental engineering and biochemistry as college students. 

Graduates of St. Mary’s High School, Jackson and Johnson join a list of notable St. Mary’s graduates, including Judge Dana Douglas, the first Black woman to serve on the New Orleans federal appeals court, and Leah Lange Chase, the late owner of Dooky Chase restaurant. 

Honestly, we’re not surprised. Black people have been flying high and defying gravity forever. Hopefully, everyone else can catch up to us. 

Dr. James Wright is a full-time assistant professor in San Diego at SDSU, teaching courses related to inequities in educational policy and leadership. He also released his memoir, “Heirs of the Great Migration: How the Past Became the Future,” last December, and it became the #1 Bestseller on Amazon. It is available in eBook and paperback. His success wasn’t easy, having overcome crime-riddled, impoverished communities and incarceration. Wright says, “My book chronicles aspects of my family’s migration from Jim Crow Era socio-politics in hopes of a better future for future generations. As part of their future generations, I speak about the realities we inherited in our ancestor’s hopeful new land.”

“Heirs of the Great Migration” is a narrative biography grounded on Wright’s family’s migration from Jim Crow-era sharecropping in North Carolina to manufacturing jobs in the industrial Northeast and told from the reference point and coming of age at the intersection of deindustrialization and the crack-cocaine epidemic (which sparked the 1994 Crime Bill and mass incarceration, e.g., The New Jim Crow). Caught in the dragnet of the Crime Bill at a young age and imprisoned, I am now a professor with an MBA and Ph.D., reflecting on overcoming historically rooted sociopolitical and socioeconomic structures, educational obstacles, and legal setbacks that mirror my ancestor’s pathways.

Wright is optimistic about the legacy he is leaving his three boys. An undervalued yet essential part of modern US history, the book helps amplify the Great Migration of Blacks from the US South, directly correlating with large populations of US Blacks across the US. Wright says, “Having overcome failed urban schools, divested communities, and prison to become a committed father of three young boys and able to speak with integrity to the various educational and societal inequities I faced as a professor of education is hopefully a new standard.”

“In this book Dr. Wright shares a powerful message about the importance of history for understanding not only our past, but also our present. While this story is rooted in his life experiences Waterbury, CT, the pattern of migration and disinvestment in Black communities he describes occurred in many cities across the country. His story of resilience is inspiring, but I was particularly taken with the rhythm, pace and use of language that communicates as sense of energy and urgency. I feel I learned about a personal history, a community history, and a national history. I also gained a new appreciation for an approach to language use and storytelling that was new to me, powerful, and that needs to be more present in publishing today.”

“Too often, we settle for quick and easy explanations of human behavior. We fail to acknowledge how the long arms of systemic racism, anti-blackness, and economic oppression hold back families, communities, and generations in ways that frustrate, negate, and even pervert individual and collective efforts. In “Heirs of the Great Migration: How the past became the future,” Professor Wright shares his story and his family’s story in a way that makes it difficult to ignore the larger truths that have plagued millions of Black families for hundreds of years.

Simultaneously, however, this brutally honest story does not condone despair. Throughout the book, the author describes how the power of faith, perseverance, and loving relationships influenced impressive outcomes against formidable odds. These triumphs neither excuse racism nor are they antitoxins for oppression. Nonetheless, Dr. Wright’s story calls upon us to see the beauty and brilliance in Black lives, to have faith in ourselves and in a power higher than ourselves, and to strive to lift up those we have the privilege and honor to support.

Shazam: Fury of the Gods debuted last week and, unfortunately, didn’t meet expectations. The film only made $30.5 million during its opening weekend. 

Many critics believe Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is to blame for Fury of the Gods’ underwhelming performance. According to Yahoo, The Rock “undercut “Shazam. Yahoo suggests that The Rock promoted a face-off between Black Adam and Superman instead of the connection to Zachary Levi’s character. Shazam. 

“There’s plenty to blame for the underwhelming grosses for “Black Adam” and “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” including middling reviews and the mixed message sent by the DC Studios revamp,” Scott Mendelson writes for Yahoo. “Like “The Lego Movie,” “Shazam 2” might be another example of a movie where the audience saw the original as family-friendly fare but perceived the sequel as a kid flick with limited appeal. Still, Johnson’s public and private actions seemed to play an undeniable role.”

Mendelson also wrote: “Dwayne tries to sell himself as bigger than the movie,” said a high-ranking Hollywood executive who asked for anonymity in order to discuss talent matters frankly while speaking to TheWrap. “He’s one of the few people who always thinks he’s the most important person in any situation or room.”

Yahoo also reports that The Rock spent ample time praising his character’s connection to Shazam as opposed to the “theoretical clash.” 

“Dwayne tries to sell himself as bigger than the movie,” one Hollywood executive told TheWrap. “Instead of making a movie, he wants to extend his brand and make a brand centered on himself.” 

Another Hollywood executive told TheWrap, “By alienating the established property that his character was born out of, and refusing to integrate with other established characters, [Johnson] systematically crippled two franchises, and has harmed DC in the process.” 

Tavis Smiley, host of “Tavis Smiley” on KBLA Talk 1580 AM, presented a total of $20,000 in scholarships to the National Association of Black Journalists of Los Angeles (NABJLA) and the Minority Photo-Journalism Institute (MPJI). Both organizations play prominent roles in helping African Americans interested in journalism and communications pursue their dreams and explore potential career opportunities.

“The National Association of Black Journalists of Los Angeles and the Minority Photo-Journalism Institute are making a tangible difference in our community by helping students pursue careers in journalism and communications,” stated Tavis Smiley. “KBLA Talk 1580 strongly believes in enlightening, empowering and encouraging tomorrow’s reporters, editors and potential talk radio hosts. Hopefully, our scholarships make a difference.”

The scholarship donations were raised at KBLA Talk 1580’s February 28, 2023, Black History Month luncheon in tribute to Black legends in Los Angeles media.

“Today’s $10,000 scholarship will help aspiring Black journalists in Los Angeles get the education and the skills they need to encourage more balanced news coverage of our community,” stated jarrett hill, president of NABJLA. “Thanks to Tavis Smiley and KBLA for their generous contribution.”

“MPJI thanks Tavis Smiley and KBLA 1580 for their generous contribution to help us continue to impact the lives of young men and women from marginalized communities in a positive way who wish to learn the profession of photography and photojournalism,” added Haywood Galbreath, photojournalist and founder of MPJI.

About NABJLA

The Los Angeles chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists was formed in 1980 to provide advocacy for Black journalists in the Los Angeles area and encourage balanced news coverage of the Black community. NABJLA also provides employment opportunity information as well as workshops for high school and college students. Learn more: https://www.nabjla.com

About MPJI:

MPJI, Minority Photo/Journalism Institute and MPJI web site are dedicated to advancing the careers of young journalism students of color. We are working with the (HBCU) Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Learn more: https://mpji.org