Entrepreneur Mandy Bowman, founder and CEO of the Official Black Wall Street app, a digital platform that lets shoppers discover local Black-owned businesses as well as an array of Black-owned products and services. She relaunched the successful app and platform on Juneteenth last year, and had more than 6,000 Black-owned businesses in her database and 13,000 Black entrepreneurs signed up spanning 10 countries.
“I think it’s super-important to support the local Black economy, because when you’re supporting Black-owned businesses it doesn’t feel like it’s going into a black hole,” said Bowman. “You know that you are helping to create generational wealth and more businesses that can compete on a larger scale.”
Bowman, a Brooklyn native, had a paternal grandmother who ran a daycare center in Bed Stuy. She said that it was fun growing up around so many family members and friends. “The first word that pops into my mind is ‘community,’” said Bowman about her childhood. “It was during that time where your neighbors looked after you.”
Bowman attended LaGuardia High School and was a vocal major. She went on to study entrepreneurship and global business management at Babson College in Boston. After college, she started digging heavily into Black history, discovering the story behind the tragic Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Tulsa, Oklahoma, was home to an affluent Black neighborhood known then as “Black Wall Street.” Over the course of two days, violent white mobs burned more than 1,400 homes and businesses to the ground, left 10,000 people homeless, and murdered approximately 300 Black people.
“The story of Tulsa reminded me of my hometown—just being able to see all these Black-owned businesses on every corner,” she said, “During that time, I noticed that there were a lot of Black-owned businesses shutting down, especially with the arrival of gentrification. The Targets, the Starbucks. It usually doesn’t bode well for the mom-and-pop shops.”
Bowman set out to empower her community in Brooklyn through economics and ownership in 2015, and created the app in 2017. She said she never intended to create the app; she simply saw a need for support in her community. Since then, Bowman has been at the forefront of the #BuyBlack movement, helping Black businesses around the world gain exposure and resources.
In 2021, Bowman solidified a $10 million partnership with a global law firm to provide Black entrepreneurs on the app with free legal services to protect their intellectual property. Her company also provides career services, webinars, rebranding resources, and grants for owners.
Bowman said one of the biggest challenges is finding funding for both herself and others.
Bowman was honored for her work with a citation from then-Brooklyn Borough President and now Mayor Eric Adams. She was named one of Entrepreneur magazine’s 100 Powerful Women in Business, became a Forbes magazine Next 1,000 Honoree, and received PayPal’s prestigious Emerging Leader Award. The app was also recently named by Apple as an App of the Day.
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.