Just BE Information

Just BE is a wellness and shared prosperity community for Black, Indigenous, Women of Color Entrepreneurs (BIWOC). We are committed to advancing the sustainability of BIWOC entrepreneurs through symbiotic communities and implementing programs that facilitate collective ownership, resource mobilization, and mutual assistance. Our vision is to develop the wellness and shared prosperity infrastructure needed to sustain BIWOC Entrepreneurs and their communities for generations to come. Just BE was founded in 2016 in Oakland, California by eight Black Women creative entrepreneurs during a particularly tragic summer when the police murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile made national news. Isolated as entrepreneurs and exhausted by racial inequality, we decided to develop a mutually supportive Black Women business community. Since then, Just BE has served over 1,500 BIWOC Entrepreneurs in the Bay Area and beyond through local mixers, Play Days, business development, and vendor markets. We have curated spaces that have generated over $250k in capital for BWEs, collectively employing over 75 people of color within our communities over six years. Our organization is driven by our core principle that becoming an entrepreneur and starting a business is a journey of personal transformation that requires healing from intergenerational trauma, a prioritization of wellness, and alignment of values - so that we do not recreate the oppressive work environments many of us left to become entrepreneurs. We understand that how we do the work with each other is even more important than what we accomplish. At Just BE, we believe in bringing our whole selves to work and creating a community of practice that is trauma-informed, LGBTQ+ inclusive, and disability-affirming. We don’t always get it right, but we are committed to the tough work of being an embodiment of our values.