Ascend LA 2020 Cohort Demographics
Through an ambitious partnership between JPMorgan Chase, the Consulting and Business Development Center at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business and nearly 100 entrepreneurial support organizations in 13 cities, including Los Angeles, Ascend is growing businesses owned by people of color, women, and veterans.
Ascend is an ecosystem approach and national network of business schools, non-profit lenders and B2B market makers that collaborate locally to spur business growth in their communities.
Ascend LA's collective of partners include the Certified Business Enterprise Supplier Training (CBEST), CDC Small Business Finance, County of Los Angeles, and South Los Angeles Transit Empowerment Zone (SLATE-Z). The Program is currently leading a cohort of 15 diverse small businesses through a 20-session management education program that focuses on the business foundation, capacity, and capital necessary to acquire corporate and government contracts.
Los Angeles County is approximately 70% people of color, however anchor institution procurement does not reflect those numbers. In 2016 the City of LA reported less than 10% of the 1.5B General Fund for professional services went to minority-owned businesses. As our first cohort kicked off Summer 2020 the business owners are eager to adapt, but continue to grow their business in a market affected by COVID-19. We are extremely proud of the outreach and marketing our partners have done to encourage a diverse pool of applications to Ascend LA, furthering our commitment to make institutional changes for the improvement of the racial and gender wealth gap in our communities.
Our first cohort consists of business owners that are 100% people of color and majority Black-women owned businesses. In the visualization below we break down various demographics ofthe cohort such as, industry, certification status, race/ethnicity, gender, etc. In addition to the demographics, the cohort businesses are located across the entire county as visualized on the map below!
