Providing Direction: Supporting Black Business Owners in Pittsburgh
As the founder of Cocoapreneur PGH, a Black business consultancy, Khamil Scantling works every day to help Black business owners flourish in Pittsburgh. What began as a directory for Black-owned business in the Pittsburgh area, Cocoapreneur.com, Scantling’s organization has expanded to provide business training and services throughout the region.
“The mission is to provide Black businesses with the exposure that they need to thrive, so that those businesses can, in turn, feed an economic system for predominantly Black neighborhoods in the greater Pittsburgh area, for the overall sustenance of Black folks in this region,” Scantling explains.
A Dietrich School alumna who graduated with a communications major and a minor in sociology with a concentration in Africana Studies, Scantling worked in various roles in the banking industry before focusing on Cocoapreneur full-time.
“I realized that everything that I focused on at Pitt is what I use for Cocoapreneur. I guess it’s by design,” she says.
Since its inception, Scantling has expanded Cocoapreneur into a resource that provides technical training, business assistance, and networking opportunities, among other things.
“This is what these people had been missing,” Scantling acknowledges. “They’re extremely talented people, but the business acumen side may have been lacking. I noticed that and I shifted into that.”
This insight led to the founding of Greenwood Week, a conference designed to connect Black business owners with what Scantling calls “business basics”: resources, networking, and business information like accounting and bookkeeping, marketing and branding, and work-life balance.
Another important aspect of the conference, Scantling notes, is addressing the way Black people are viewed within the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
“When we talk about venture capital and tech startups—there is a fraction of a percentage of funding through venture capital that goes to Black women,” says Scantling. “Getting into the larger system to help create the pipelines that we need to live, be successful, and choose what success looks like—you don’t have to scale to a $50 million company, if you just want to be able to take care of your immediate circle and family, we want you to be able to do that.”
The COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges to business owners across the region. Scantling says that for Black businesses navigating COVID-19, capital is the biggest issue.
“A lot of small businesses bootstrap; they raise money from friends and family or working a 9-to-5. A lot of it is really capital to be able to make changes to be able to navigate COVID-19, or just to stay afloat until normal business operation resumes,” she explains.
The growth of Cocoapreneur highlights the need for Black business support in the Pittsburgh area. Scantling explained how meaningful it has been to have community support behind the organization.
“Being a transplant, I wasn’t sure how people were going to receive what I was doing, but I got, and I continue to get, the utmost support and love from people in this region,” she says. “It’s one of those things—when you’re working your purpose, things just seem to align. That’s really what I’m finding and it’s giving me the power to keep pushing.”
The community support was particularly evident this summer, explains Scantling.
“After George Floyd’s murder there were protests in the city, and there were some infiltrators who came in and started to vandalize downtown,” she says. “I started a fundraiser to help two of the businesses downtown that were Black-owned, and this fund from the community, from actual individuals and small businesses, raised about $60,000, which is amazing. Amazing!”
With additional support from the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the Hillman Foundation, the fund reached $100,000, and Scantling was able to give small businesses mini-grants of up to $5,000.
“That’s community support that is life-changing,” she says. “That’s the difference between a business keeping its doors open and having to shut down forever.”
Scantling pointed out one woman who received a grant and immediately turned around to give smaller grants to others in the community. “That’s what I’ve always envisioned for the work. This pay-it-forward mentality, and a self-sustaining system where you pour into others, and then they pour into others, and then that eventually gets back to you too. This past year has been a real model for what I would like to see continue in this region and all over about what it looks like to be a community. Not just a Black community, not just a Jewish community, just a community because of proximity—we are all in the same space.”
How do we support our neighbors with small businesses? Actively show them you care, says Scantling. Show up for them, be there for them, and allow them room to grow.
In addition, “giving people space and grace to make mistakes,” she says. Let the owner know if you have a bad experience at a business, and be careful about what you put on social media.
“When you think about the historical context of why Black people in America are where they are currently…it’s hundreds of years of terrorism, with few gaps in between. A lot of the mentality that people have around business and going into business is very fear-based,” Scantling offers. “When you have a community that supports you, and they let you know they value you being there, when they spend time in your space, when they spend money in your space, when they tell other people about your space, those things are important.”
Scantling says that in the time she has lived in the city Pittsburgh has made strides in becoming a more livable place for Black people, but emphasizes that much more work is needed to make the city a place where every person can feel welcome and free.
“In the time that I have been here, I will say that it has exponentially grown,” says Scantling, “even with all that growth, we’re still nowhere near where we should be. But it’s moving in the right direction.”