Congratulations to the Tampa Bay Chamber's 2024 Cohort of the Minority Business Accelerator. On November 18, 2024, the group of local entrepreneurs became the sixth cohort to graduate from the accelerator. The 2024 Cohort of nine Black and Hispanic owned businesses was led by Chair Michael Flores of JP Morgan Chase, and includes business owners in the sectors of cyber security, artificial intelligence, construction, health & beauty, and law.
The 2-year curriculum helps entrepreneurs access financial capital and increase their networks of potential clients and suppliers in the public and private sectors. The result are increased capacity, creation of jobs and building of wealth. “A few years ago, the Tampa Bay Chamber was faced with a number we could not unsee. In our diverse community, minority owned businesses enjoy only 5% of the revenues in Hillsborough County’s local economy, even though they are almost half of all locally owned businesses,” said Dr. Bob Rohrlack, President & CEO of the Chamber, explaining the genesis for the accelerator. “Faced with that disparity between local non-minority and minority owned businesses, we spend the next three years in research mode. First obtaining quantifiable data on the local business community. Second identifying which ethnic segments needed focused assistance. Third, zeroing in on two key obstacles for this specific group – lack of access to financial capital for growth and the need to expand supplier relationships with larger entities in the public and private sectors.”
The first cohort was launched in 2017 at a time when existing programs in the region focused on start-up businesses or limited to the technology industry. Measurable outcomes of the MBA program now span 6 cohorts with the most recent graduation of the '24 Cohort.