Atlanta-based venture capital fund the Fearless Fund is back in the headlines due to the news that co-founder and COO Ayana Parsons has stepped down from her role.
As ESSENCE previously reported, the federal appeals court ruled that the Fearless Fund’s Fearless Striver Grant Contest for Black women business owners was discriminatory. Even though this announcement occurred in the aftermath of the 11th Circuit Court’s ruling earlier this month, Parsons asserts that it did not factor into her decision-making.
Parsons told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she actually “stepped down from the position in April.” Her co-founder, Arian Simone, will remain at the helm of the Fund as CEO.
“I have stepped back from the operations of the fund, so I’m not in the day-to-day, I’m not running it,” stated Parsons. “But what I can tell you as it relates to me, is I’m a problem solver. I’m a changemaker. And so, I am pulling together people to talk about innovative and creative ways that we can continue to drive change and do it in multiple areas.”
Parsons also posted a statement on her LinkedIn page confirming the news, which read in part: “I remain steadfast in my support of Fearless Fund and committed to the advancement of women and people of color.”
“The best way I can do that is to boldly focus on new strategies and tactics. Because if the courts are going to sideline our best practices, we need to design and implement alternatives,” Parsons continued. “We must innovate.”
Parsons’ act of stepping down from her role appears to be a part of a larger problematic trend. With continued conservative backlash against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, “Black women looking to climb the corporate ladder face a more hostile landscape than ever,” Fast Company reports. One only has to look at former embattled Harvard University president Claudine Gay and ex-Walgreens CEO Rosalind Brewer as evidence that Black women continue to be sacrificial lambs who are essentially being forced to make themselves smaller after making great gains in ascending the corporate ladder.
This is emblematic of historical gains and losses. Assata Zerai, University of New Mexico Vice President for Equity and Inclusion discussed the “two steps forward, one step back” phenomenon, stating “Progress towards creating a more inclusive culture is incremental; and sometimes progress is made in one area and then there’s this period of retrenchment, such as Reconstruction and then the rise of Jim Crow laws.” Is this the case with DEI? Is it a death knell that will eventually be reversed?
However history shakes out, when it comes to the world of venture capital, this step back is troubling given the already low starting point. The data is clear—“[l]ess than 1% of all VC [venture capital] dollars in 2023 went to Black-founded startups, which amounts to around $661 million out of $136 billion.”
With their grant program, the Fearless Fund was trying to rectify this disparity. But the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER), which is led by Edward Blum the conservative activist who successfully challenged affirmative action at the Supreme Court, took the Fearless Fund to court over their “right to provide $20,000 in small business grants to Black women” and even utilized the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to bolster their argument, claiming the law bans using “race in contracts.”