NEW ORLEANS — The next round of applications will go live on the Maroon website in May an announcement will be made on the company's social media.
Two sisters in New Orleans are working together to make sure small businesses in the crescent city have a fighting chance.
The duo is currently in the middle of their 9-session Small Business Co-Hort. 30 local small and micro businesses are getting a crash course in what it takes to scale up their companies.
“We will have panel discussions with entrepreneurs, folks that are really smart as it relates to small business and entrepreneurship,” said Maroon CEO Jawan Brown-Alexander.
The Cohort is being hosted at Maroon, a co-working space in the Lower Garden District.
“We're an incubator. We're an organization that provides support to small businesses,” said Brown-Alexander. It is really about reaching back into the community to support folks that live here and that work here,” said Brown-Alexander.
Dozens of business owners applied, and thirty were accepted, many of which are minority-owned.
“If you look at the data,” said Maroon Founder Jade Brown-Russell. “Those small businesses that fail, many times its, Black and brown small businesses. We want to bolster that.”
Jade and Jawan are passionate about their mission at Maroon, a passion that is fueled by their background in Law and Education.
“Maroon gives us the opportunity to merge the two,” said Brown-Alexander. “To be able to walk side by side with Jade, who is our founder, it’s been an amazing journey so far.”
“We have always been around strong women of all kinds,” said Brown-Russell. “Our grandmother, our mother, our aunts, and even outside of our family. We’ve always been around great amazing strong.”
They believe their example can push the leaders of tomorrow forward.
“This is an opportunity for us to really leverage all the partnerships that we have across the city and beyond,” said Brown-Alexander. “It’s an opportunity for folks to come and really engage with us and connect with us. Not working in those silos. It’s an opportunity for small business owners to network and to really figure out how to scale up.”
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