By: Ashli Lyric Jones
The key to running any successful business begins with access to capital. Capital can come from a variety of sources such as friends, family, financial 
institutions, online lenders, credit card companies, insurance companies, and federal loan programs. According to research done by American Express, although Black women are starting businesses at the fastest rate of any racial group, Black women are more likely than their non-minority peers to identify access to credit as a challenge.
Dr. Roshawnna Novellus, Founder & CEO of EnrichHER, saw the lack of economic power of women as one of the biggest issues plaguing the United States. She founded EnrichHER, a platform that allows funders to provide capital to underinvested, small business owners across the United States, such as companies led by women, Black founders, and people of color.
Dr. Novellus holds a Doctor of Science in Systems Engineering from George Washington University, a Master of Science in Information Technology emphasizing Information Systems Engineering, a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management Economics, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering, achieving Summa Cum Laude in all. She decided to use her skill sets powering solutions to decrease the gap in power that exists. Dr. Novellus’s goal to reduce the gap in power has led her to transition from working in the financial advisory side of business to leading community engagement and advocacy, and now creating solutions for access to capital.
After seeing the gap in the marketplace for women business owners, Dr. Novellus decided she wanted to be not only a part of the community that highlights attention to this problem but also a part of the community that provides a solution. EnrichHER is a combination of everything that Dr. Novellus has learned over the past ten years from her corporate and entrepreneurial endeavors.
“Everything you do is based on your past experiences and I model what we do based on what I feel makes people the most comfortable, safe, and the most creative.”
As a company, EnrichHER is flexible and provides a work-life balance to employees. Dr. Novellus runs EnrichHER with an understanding of the outside factors that may occur in her employees’ lives because the team is about 90% women, and about 50% of them have children. When it comes to training, Dr. Novellus leads her team through developing skills such as being a leader in every situation, despite the circumstances. Find more about the opportunities through EnrichHER.
What challenges do you face as a black woman entrepreneur?
“When you have a job at a consulting firm with a big title people assume that you have something going for you, whereas an entrepreneur, most people think you’re an entrepreneur because you can’t do anything else or you can’t get a job.”
As a Black woman entrepreneur, Dr. Novellus often must deal with marginalization. The level of trust and faith that she receives when she is interacting with people individually is reduced significantly than when she was leading teams at big organizations. Despite her impressive credentials, people rarely give her the benefit of the doubt because she is a Black woman. People often assume that she needs someone else on her team to validate her. Such experiences have driven Dr. Novellus to help people in underrepresented communities.
Is there anything in your background that shaped who you are today as an entrepreneur?
“Often we are not provided options that are really made for us.”
Both of Dr. Novellus’s parents were entrepreneurs, which allowed her to become familiar with the concept of entrepreneurship. While working as a consultant, Dr. Novellus would often have conversations with her mother about her goals and visions for the future. Her mother would often tell her that she is supposed to become an entrepreneur. After discovering that she did not have the continued desire to work for anyone else, Dr. Novellus decided to follow in her mother’s footsteps and start her own business.
While working in both corporate and academia, Dr. Novellus realized that most of her co-workers all had the same issues when it came to their finances: lack of understanding and lack of empowerment. She would help her co-workers with their 401(k)-retirement plan investing, assist them with the closing of their houses, and help build their confidence so they could make critical financial transactions. These interactions helped her form the idea to help people when it comes to financing and raising capital.
In the past, Dr. Novellus has had experiences where she felt excluded or felt like things weren’t designed for her as a Black woman. For example, while working for a technology company in New York, she was one of the few members on her team that only spoke English. Since the other team members solely spoke another language, that was not English, she was told that she didn’t have to come to team meetings because she didn’t speak or understand their language. Because of these experiences, Dr. Novellus endeavors to ensure that no one she works with feels excluded. Ultimately, such experiences inspired her to start EnrichHER with a narrow focus to assist underrepresented groups such as women, Black women, and people of color.
Do you have any advice for someone interested in becoming an entrepreneur?
“Do a self-reflection on if you can grow in all the ways you need to grow in order to be the type of entrepreneur that you want to be.”
It is important to do a self-reflection to make sure entrepreneurship is right for you. Although entrepreneurship doesn’t have a safety net, Dr. Novellus believes a successful entrepreneur can come up with an impactful solution that people value, and that will generate revenue.
Each day Dr. Novellus is challenged with figuring out the best use of her time to have the biggest impact on her target audience. She starts her day with words of affirmation and journaling to make sure she is in the best mindset to envision, brainstorm, and execute the tasks of the day.
Specifically, for Dr. Novellus, it took her a long time to transition into the entrepreneurial mindset because she was used to the academic way of doing things. While pursuing her Ph.D. at George Washington University, Dr. Novellus worked a full-time job at John Hopkins University and later practiced as a management consultant until she completed school. In school, Dr. Novellus was used to repeating what the professor wanted to hear and not encouraged to think more creatively. Dr. Novellus feels some of her educational experience stifled her entrepreneurial thinking, but once she broke free of that way of thinking, she was able to adjust her mindset to become the successful entrepreneur that she is today.
More advice: As an entrepreneur, you must be able to pivot quickly based on customer feedback. You have to have the ability to learn from others and make modifications quickly to thrive.
What is your favorite part of running enrichher?
“My favorite part is that it is all up to me to decide what to do to fulfill this goal that I have.”
Dr. Novellus enjoys waking up every day and getting to reflect on the decisions that she makes for EnrichHER. She appreciates the fact that she decided to live her freedom in a way that positively impacts others.
Dr. Novellus has a weekly newsletter The Secret, the Significant, the Successful: Profiles of Women-led Businesses, which showcases the profiles of women-led businesses and her commitment to empowering women.
It was a pleasure getting to interview Dr. Novellus, and I cannot wait to see the continued work Dr. Novellus and EnrichHER continue to do.
For more information on EnrichHER or to sign up to become a member, click here for further details.
Ashli Jones, at the time of this post, is a third-year law student at Penn State Dickinson Law. She is from Long Island, New York, and is a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Ashli is pursuing a certificate in Entrepreneurship with an Intellectual Property and Technology concentration. She is interested in intellectual property within the entertainment law field. Ashli is the President of the Sports & Entertainment Law Society, Mentorship Chair for the Women’s Law Caucus, and Social Chair for the Black Law Students Association.
Sources:
http://www.thewealthyyogi.com/about
Photo Sources:
https://www.startupfunding.co/episodes/dr-roshawnna-novellus
https://helloalice.com/resources/funding/enrich-her-funding
