Here’s how David Smallwood is helping to create thousands of Black-owned businesses

ORLANDO, Fla. – This week on “Black Men Sundays,” host Corie Murray interviews David Smallwood, a wealth management advisor with Northwestern Mutual.

Smallwood is partnered with Nashville-based nonprofit Corner to Corner, a group with a goal of creating 10,000 Black-owned businesses within the next decade.

“I knew that it wasn’t just about helping people save for their future, that I had to figure out a way to start to give back into the community and empower the community with some of these financial principles, and so instead of reinventing the wheel, I’m always looking for folks who are already doing certain things and where I can come alongside them and lock arms with folks who may be in a complementary lane to what I’m doing, and Corner to Corner is one of those organizations,” Smallwood said.

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Corner to Corner’s approach to tackling economic inequity involves holding financial literacy workshops in an effort to provide opportunities for young creatives and new entrepreneurs.

“What Corner to Corner does is that they’ve said, ‘Hey, the average Black family is about a 10th — wealth-wise — of the average White family in terms of economic empowerment,’ and so they’ve said, ‘You know, that’s creating a $1.6 trillion loss to the American people because of that gap,” he said. “One of the ways that we can close that gap is through Black entrepreneurship, that there’s an intuitive, instinctive, I would call just DNA inside of Black folks to want to be entrepreneurs and make things happen. So Corner to Corner said, ‘Hey, let’s empower them to do that. Let’s create a pathway to create micro entrepreneurs in the Black community and let’s let those dollars recycle back into the Black community and that can be one way to close the racial wealth gap that’s separate from a welfare system,’ or saying, ‘Hey, let me just give you some dollars and see what you can do, let’s empower you to be an entrepreneur and a business owner and change your family’s generational legacy.’”

Hear the full interview in Season 4, Episode 13 of “Black Men Sundays.”

Black Men Sundays talks about building generational wealth. Check out every episode in the media player below.