The San Francisco City Board of Supervisors this week recognized a local transgender nonprofit for its programs that support transgender and nonbinary entrepreneurs.
According to local LGBTQ+ media outlet Bay Area Reporter, at a regular meeting held at San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday, the commission recognized the transgender neighborhood’s entrepreneurial development program and presented the neighborhood with an honorary award.
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Only 4% of small businesses in the U.S. are owned by queer entrepreneurs, according to a 2021 study by the Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement Research. Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who is gay, praised the trans district for addressing this disparity “by providing valuable support to trans entrepreneurs who face significant barriers in pursuing their small business dreams.”
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Since launching in 2020, the Tenderloin-based Transgender Neighborhood Entrepreneurship Program has helped 37 transgender and non-binary people start their own businesses. The four-month annual program offers participants webinars, mentorship, one-on-one coaching and more, all at no cost, and graduates receive $10,000 in seed funding.
Mandelman also praised the program’s graduates for “working in a wide variety of businesses.”
“Thanks to the district’s support, program alumna Jessica Lamb founded Open Doors HR, an LGBTQ+ and AAPI-led HR team, and Avery Zeus founded a catering company, Concept Kitchen, to build community through food and feed many LGBTQ+ people. [individuals],” He said.
Carlo Gomez Arteaga, co-executive director of the Transgender District with Breonna McCrea, accepted the honor Wednesday surrounded by 2024 program participants and members of the San Francisco Transgender Initiative Office, including Transgender District Program Director Sam Favela and Transgender District co-founder Honey Mahogany.
“Our programs are critical,” Arteaga said, noting that of Mandelman’s 4 percent figure, “an even smaller percentage of businesses are transgender or non-binary led.”
“So we really want to elevate what this funding and opportunity means to our community,” he continued, “especially during a time when we are being ‘otherized’ and many in our community are being criminalized for simply existing when all they want is dignity and the ability to have the same civil rights and freedoms as everyone else in the United States.”
Arteaga noted that San Francisco’s Economic and Workforce Development Agency, which funds the program, has “helped not only bring these entrepreneurs’ ideas to fruition, but also fund the next step of what that could be for us.”
Arteaga further emphasized the confidence that the Trans Neighborhood program gives its graduates and the importance of “city leadership like San Francisco working to expand local business models and opportunities to the most vulnerable and marginalized members of our communities.”
As the Bay Area Reporter noted, the 2024 Entrepreneur Accelerator program is already well underway, wrapping up next month. Mandelman praised this year’s program participants at a city hall on Wednesday, saying, “I look forward to watching you all succeed and, in turn, contribute to San Francisco’s vibrant small business community.”
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