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.

Henry Rock will be on our show live tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern/6 p.m. Pacific. He will talking about various subjects including black men and entrepreneurship.

During our live conversation, you have the opportunity to call in and share with us and ask questions via Skype. If you would like to do this, please call us at: doctorvibe42. If you get through, please be patient and we will get to your call as soon as possible.

All you need to listen to the conversation live tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern/6 p.m. Pacific is:

Tablet/Smartphone: Please go to the “Mixlr” player at the bottom of http://thedrvibeshow.com/ and click on “Click To Play”.

You can also provide your comments and questions during the event via Twitter (@drvibeshow#DrVibe) and at our Facebook Fan Page at “The Dr. Vibe Show” Facebook Fan Page.

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

[embedplusvideo height=”380″ width=”450″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1Ac9PMr” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/8l8HiajVJDs?fs=1&vq=hd720″ vars=”ytid=8l8HiajVJDs&width=450&height=380&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=1&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep4915″ /]
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.

Please feel free to email us at info@blackcanadianman.com

Please feel free to “Like” the “The Dr. Vibe Show” Facebook fan page at “The Dr. Vibe Show” Facebook Fan Page

God bless, peace, be well and keep the faith,
Dr. Vibe
info@blackcanadianman.com
Producer of Google+ Hangouts – The Good Men Project
The Dr. Vibe Show At “The Good Men Project”
Dr. Vibe on HuffPost Live – August 2, 2013
2013 Black Weblog Awards Finalist (Best Podcast)
2012 Black Weblog Award Winner (Best International Blog)
2012 Black Weblog Awards Finalist (Best Podcast)
2011 Black Weblog Awards Finalist (Best International Blog and Best Podcast Series)
Black Blog Of The Day – Black Bloggers Network – June 23, 2011
Twitter
Twitter hashtag: #DrVibe
The Dr. Vibe Show – iTunes
Dr. Vibe Media – You Tube
Google+
The Dr. Vibe Show – Stitcher Radio
“The Dr. Vibe Show” Facebook Fan Page