New Voices Fund officially launches with twice the initial commitment — $100 million
When Richelieu Dennis came to the U.S. from his home in Liberia to attend Babson College, he wasn’t expecting to stay. But unable to return home owing to the first Liberian civil war, stay he did, building the personal care products company SheaMoisture with his college roommate Nyema Tubman in Harlem and later establishing a larger holding company, Sundial Brands, that would oversee a suite of product lines focused on women of color.
Among them, SheaMoisture, Nyakio, Nubian Heritage and Madame C.J. Walker, named after a philanthropist and social activist and one of the earliest female founders of color. (Walker, the daughter of slaves, died a wealthy woman at the age of 51 in 1919, after herself developing a line of beauty and hair products for black women.)
All that hard work was seemingly rewarded when, last year, consumer goods giant Unilever acquired Sundial for undisclosed terms. In a unique twist, the deal should fuel the companies of future founders of color, too.
To wit, when the acquisition was announced, Unilever and Sundial announced they would create a new investment vehicle to empower minority women entrepreneurs — the New Voices Fund — to which they would commit an initial $50 million.
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