Today we’d like to introduce you to Carolyn Praylow, Kwame Egerton II and Ackeem Kipp, The founders of The Black Currency.
Carolyn, Kwame and Ackeem, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
The Black Currency came to life shortly after multiple social injustice issues related to police brutality and other heavy concerns in the brown and black community. We wanted to create a platform that took on a different approach outside of protesting and focused more on economical impact leveraging social to drive this mission within our first phase.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
For us at The Black Currency, one obstacle we initially came across was the right name to represent what our goal is with our platform. As most people know, branding is very vital for early stages in a company and how we solidified our name was a process. We started by brainstorming a few names and conducting a google search on the list of brand names we brainstormed. When Googling, we saw that when searching “The Black Currency” a narrative was already painted which highlighted black individuals involved in a money scam. This inspired us to want to change the narrative which we felt is also portrayed through the media in America.
Establishing the new age of black wealth in itself is a challenge due to lack of financial literacy resulting in countless years of financial trauma. The median household net worth of a black family in America is $17,500 in comparison to $171,000 for white families (nearly ten times more). As a result, our goal of increasing the amount of future black millionaires, constructing a supply chain of businesses and suppliers, and lastly but most importantly, educating and equipping our people will be an uphill battle we’re ready to take on.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about The Black Currency – what should we know?
Our goal is to educate and equip our community with the right financial education and tools to create more millionaires and generational wealth. Creating a platform to provide education around trading stock, real estate investing, budgeting and more is vital to shifting the minds of our young and old. For the first phase of our business, we have used social media to create an audience and have hosted live conversations with professionals that look like us and to have them share their stories of success. We have different phases in our project plan that we look to diversify our offerings to the community and are open to collaborating with black-owned businesses.
We are most proud of the reception from our community and having investors interested in being a part of our mission within our first three months. The amount of organic growth we have done within the first three months has far reached expectations and we are so excited for what’s to come.
What were you like growing up?
Kwame: Growing up, I was actually fairly quiet and introverted (a lot of people who met me after the age of 22 would be surprised by this). If I was close with you, my personality would be present but if you were a stranger, you wouldn’t get much out of me. I’ve always had a nonchalant laid back attitude. I also saw both sides of the spectrum from a financial well-being standpoint (I.e. modest vs middle class) when comparing my mothers side of the family to my dad’s.
As I got into my adolescence, I was always a “Cool Nerd”. I was skipped in High school for Math, was known for being well dressed, an athlete, and excelled in STEM-related topics in my studies. I was raised in Brooklyn, New York with my Dad and Grandmother in a crown heights apartment (I.e. the modest financial experience) and visited my mother in Long Island on weekends (I.e. the middle class perspective).
Seeing the difference in lifestyle between my two loved ones made me passionate about reducing the financial literacy gap in The Black Community. The mindset has always been that if one of us can succeed, then why can’t we all. From a personality perspective, I’ve also grown to become an introverted extrovert at this point in my life. This change has helped me to excel within entrepreneurship as Co-Founder of The Black Currency, my career as a Finance Project Manager at Facebook, as well as in my personal life.
Ackeem: Growing up, I was a very observant, reserved kid. Being that the language of money wasn’t a key focus in our household growing up outside of being told just to save, that scarcity mindset was something that was all too common to the majority of my friends and families. I always felt that I would own my own business one day that would relieve me and my family of this mindset and it was an early business endeavor which is what led begin shedding this thought process.
Senior year of junior high school going into high school, I created a small hustle in which I made and sold sandwiches to my colleagues as an alternative to school lunch. Some laughed and others commended the work effort. Being a top student, this gave me leverage into running this business and even had purchased from teachers and school aids.
That entrepreneurial spirit was engraved early in me which led me to expanding into real estate, stock/currency trading and being able to create a platform to educate and equip our people with the need to know related to financial literacy and our history.
Carolyn: I was born in the Bronx, raised in Brooklyn, and went to high school in Queens, so I’m a true New Yorker with a hustler’s mentality. I studied performing arts growing up & I’ve always had a passion for community service. My friends would describe me as outgoing, determined & the life of the party. Not much has changed over the years.
I took a risk and moved to Miami where I really gained my independence and jump-started my career in events and hospitality. Currently, I reside in Los Angeles where I work as an event manager and head of social for The Black Currency. Being raised by a single mom, I’ve always observed my mother and her relationship to money through having multiple streams of income. From a young age, I decided that I wanted to work smarter and not harder. It was important for me to partner with other young creatives to change the narrative of black economics and share knowledge of financial literacy.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @TheBlackCurrency
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