Henry Rock has extensive experience in sales, marketing, advertising, media management and small business strategic planning and development, with particular emphasis on black businesses and the black consumer market. It’s this background, coupled with the need to not to be a bystander, while the plight of young men of color remained enormously challenging.

Henry is the Executive Director of City Startup Labs (CSL). CSL grew out of an idea to do something thoughtful and of real value to address the issue of the employability of young men of color. African American men, in particular, have a difficult time getting and keeping jobs. They consistently lag behind their white and Hispanic counterparts. According to a Princeton University study, “Discrimination in Low Wage Labor Markets,” Even without criminal records, black applicants had low rates of positive responses, about the same as the response rate for white applicants with criminal records. Hispanics also faced discrimination by employers, but were preferred relative to blacks.

So rather than rely on others to define and write their future, it’s time that these young men to be empowered to write or rewrite their own script, by becoming a new class of entrepreneurs.

In the late Summer of 2011, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg announced the Young Men’s Initiative to address the harsh present and future facing many young men of color from the ages of 14-24 years. The intention of the initiative is to focus on education, the criminal justice system, employment and health care. What was missing from this puzzle, in my estimation was attention on self-employment and entrepreneurship.

As a result CSL was created to provide an academy of instruction, training, mentoring and coaching to prepare these young men to become viable entrepreneurs, thereby contributing to not only themselves, but their families, communities and the country in a fundamentally positive way.

Pre-Great Recession, black men, 18-34 years were nearly a third more likely to start businesses than white males of the same age.

During our conversation, Henry talks about:

– Some of his background
– How activism has been part of his life since a young age
– Some of his family’s amazing lineage
– Some highlights in his media sales and marketing journey including working of Johnson Publishing Company (publishers of Ebony and Jet magazines)
– The story behind City Startup Labs and the program
– His message for black men

To find out more about Henry, go to:

Website

To find out more about City Startup Labs, go to:

Website
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
Linkedin
Instagram

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Creating a New Class of Entrepreneurs: Henry Rock at TEDxCharlotteED
Fast track entrepreneurship training can be a potent remedy to chronic unemployment in inner-city America. City Startup Labs is piloting an academy, to teach young black men in Charlotte, how to start and operate small businesses, using accelerated, boot-camp style instruction.

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God bless, peace, be well and keep the faith,
Dr. Vibe
info@blackcanadianman.com
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