Kate Downing Khaled | Founder & CEO
Take a second to imagine a city street — maybe one in front of your home or office building.
The flashing lights of a three-way traffic light might catch your eye. Maybe there’s a row of protected mailboxes located nearby. And if you’re located in a metropolitan area, maybe you see a street sweeper machine making its way down the block.
Did you know that all those essential facets of city life were invented by Black people?
Black people are the innovators behind inventions that play essential roles in our lives, yet those origins are overlooked, forgotten, or ignored. Unfortunately, this is a pattern we see again and again in city life, local government, philanthropy, and any field you can think of.
That’s the status quo — but we can subvert it.
Make it a practice to remind yourself where real innovation comes from every single day.
Adding intentionality behind these daily reminders is how we can all build the foundation to center Black innovators and other overlooked community members in our strategy design.
When your user is your most important designer, it’s not simply the group that’s the most over-represented in your dataset.
By centering your user, their ideas are acknowledged. Their expertise is lifted and celebrated. They receive meaningful compensation and hopefully wealth as a result.
We have a LONG way to go until the Black innovators in our community are celebrated, not co-opted.
That’s why it’s so important to acknowledge and uplift Black innovation daily in all areas of our life.
It’s not enough to dedicate February to Black History Month! I could go on and on about how it’s the shortest month of the year, to begin with…
The truth is, centering Black innovators has the power to create more prosperity, health, and justice for everyone.
Solutions dreamed up by the people experiencing the deepest disparities have the most significant potential to improve everyone’s life!
A great example of this is our work with the Groundbreak Coalition.
Members of the Coalition represent leaders from 200+ different private and public agencies — banks, philanthropies, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and local and state government agencies. Many organizations have mission statements that focus on serving Indigenous, Latine, and other specific cultural communities.
Yet, all of these leaders have embraced a shared and singular goal to build enormous Black wealth across Minnesota and beyond.
Because when we work toward systemic justice — especially for Black communities — we all win.
So, on behalf of all of us at Imagine Deliver, I invite you to join us in celebrating Black History and Innovation ALL YEAR LONG! And guess what? You’re invited every year after this one, too.
Here’s a great way to start — write back to uplift one of your favorite examples of Black innovation. Check out this great list to get inspired!
