A yr after settling its DEI lawsuit, the Fearless Fund has returned with a model new initiative: the Fearless World Initiative.
On Monday, September 22, Fearless Fund CEO and founding companion Arian Simone was joined by greater than 100 attendees on the inaugural Fearless World Summit in New York, the place she launched the initiative, the Atlanta Journal-Structure reported.
“My coronary heart is full,” she wrote within the caption of an Instagram put up concerning the occasion.
“Thanks to everybody who got here out for the inaugural Fearless World Initiative occasion beneath @fearlessfreedommedia,” she continued. “This gathering was greater than an occasion; it was the start of a world motion rooted in financial inclusion, fairness, and justice.”
The summit introduced collectively a various group of notables, together with U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and CNN journalist Abby Phillip, alongside entrepreneurs, buyers, and advocates. Visitors participated in panels on entry to capital, the worldwide diaspora economic system, and coverage frameworks wanted for fairness. The triumphant assembly of the minds was a far cry from the place the Fearless Fund discovered itself only a yr in the past, when its first iteration got here to a screeching halt beneath the burden of a landmark lawsuit.
The unique Fearless Fund launched in 2019 in Atlanta to shut the hole in funding for women-of-color-led ventures. By 2023, it had made multimillion-dollar investments in Black ladies founders and helped convey nationwide consideration to disparities in enterprise capital. However in August of that yr, the conservative group American Alliance for Equal Rights sued the fund, claiming its grant program for Black ladies entrepreneurs was discriminatory. The case led to an injunction and a prolonged authorized battle, earlier than a 2024 settlement pressured the fund to completely shut down the grant program.
“It was actually pointless, you already know, simply because we determined to be audacious and reduce million-dollar checks to Black ladies, it prompted a critical disruption on this nation,” Simone instructed the Atlanta Journal-Structure.
However the legacy of the lawsuit isn’t in what the fund misplaced, she insisted, however in what it sparked. Its true influence, she mentioned, lies in “the work that we plan to get achieved with the intention to enhance the appropriate to fund marginalized communities.”
That work is now embodied within the Fearless World Initiative. The brand new effort combines funding with advocacy and coverage change. Its mission is centered on what Simone calls “demographic fairness” — guaranteeing that alternatives and capital stream is in alignment with the true demographic make-up of communities and markets.
“The Fearless World Initiative exists as a result of financial inclusion just isn’t charity; it’s justice,” Simone wrote on Instagram. “By centering daring conversations, brave management, and a collective imaginative and prescient, we’re designing a future that’s deeply inclusive and unapologetically fearless.”
Whereas the primary fund primarily centered on writing checks to founders, this new mannequin goals to remodel the system itself by opening doorways on the coverage degree and establishing international infrastructure for fairness. Quickly, Simone plans to take the mission worldwide with an upcoming journey to the United Nations.
“I knew that it wasn’t simply so simple as having a fund,” Simone instructed the Atlanta Journal-Structure. “It was actually, we’re going to should get insurance policies to vary. We’re going to should get totally different doorways to open in order that extra folks may even do what it’s that we do.”
