This week on The Urban Business Roundtable, UBR Contributor Angelique Westerfield speaks with Brenda Palms Barber, the founder of Sweet Beginnings, a Chicago-based green-collar business that employs the formerly incarcerated, and the founding Executive Director of the North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN). Located in the North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, Sweet Beginnings produces Urban Honey and Beeline Skin Care Products. Annually, NLEN serves 1,200 men and women, placing 75% in unsubsidized employment and hiring others in its transitional jobs program, referring them to entrepreneurial tracks or helping them to secure additional skills and education.
Palms Barber is one of a growing number of champions of the green-collar job creation movement, which aims to create job opportunities in local communities via the green economy. Click here for more on the efforts of black entrepreneurs and sustainable community activists and their efforts to leverage employment opportunities in the green space.
Also, check out BEing Green and Green Insider at BlackEnterprise.com for more on African Americans involved in green economy and sustainable energy intiatives.
Also on this week’s edition of The Urban Business Roundtable, our Executive Producer TaQuoya Kennedy speaks with award winning media strategist Chris St. Hilaire, author of 27 Powers of Persuasion: Simple Strategies to Seduce Audiences & Win Allies, about the art of persuasion. For more expert advice from St. Hilaire, check out “Biz Expert Q&A: 4 Ways To Get People to Do What You Want.”
If you have a question you want answered or a topic you want addressed on The Urban Business Roundtable, send me an e-mail at edmonda@blackenterprise.com or to me at Twitter or Facebook.
Alfred Edmond Jr. is the editor-in-chief of BlackEnterprise.com 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 Wednesday for The UBR Morning Post, which features additional resources, advice and information from and about the topics, entrepreneurs and experts featured on the show.