Black Business Initiative: Making a Difference

Text – The Black Business Initiative (BBI) has been championing the Black business community in Nova Scotia since 1996. The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) is proud to be a part of this journey.
Title – Making a difference
Rustum Southwell, Founding CEO, Black Business Initiative – I think we’ve made a significant impact. I believe that folks are looking at this at different lenses.
Burtley Francis, Partner, Stewart McKevey & BBI Board Member – It was recognizing that the Black Business Community wasn’t being integrated into the larger community and that there needed to be an active step towards that. And so BBI was born out of that recognition of the unique challenges for African Nova Scotians.
Amanda Sparkes, Economic Development Officer, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency – BBI was a trailblazer long before diversity equity and inclusion was a buzzword that everyone’s talking about now. BBI was walking the walk.
Ross Simmonds, Founder and CEO, Foundation Marketing & Former BBI Client – When you go back in time to when BBI was first getting started there was only a handful of organizations that were typically considered Black-owned. But when you look at the market today, there is a thriving ecosystem where in many ways Halifax is creating a bit of a Black Wall Street where there is a lot of Black entrepreneurs coming up and staring some amazing companies that are going to do and continue to do some amazing things on a global level.
Text – In 2022, after 26 years of supporting Black entrepreneurs in Nova Scotia, BBI expanded across Atlantic Canada
Amanda Sparkes – Pan-Atlantic is a big initiative for any organization. You know, it takes a lot of people, it takes a lot of effort, but what I love that BBI did when they started their Pan-Atlantic experience is they first started with connections and community.
Rustum Southwell – We chose Pan-Atlantic because strategically it’s better to crawl, walk, run.
Tracey Thomas, Executive Director, Public Service Commission & BBI Board Member – We’re all connected in the Atlantic provinces so how can we actually benefit and collaborate better on different things because I think the more we partner and collaborate together here as an Atlantic community we can bid on jobs internationally if we wanted to as a collective. I think the possibilities are endless.
Amanda Sparkes – When we look at BBI over the course of the past 26 years they’re really at a major inflection point where their mandate has grown, their staff has grown, and their products are growing.
Burtley Francis – To take the work that we’ve done to this point and grow it nationally is such an exciting opportunity that we’re looking forward to.
Ross Simmonds – It’s on to the next chapter. And the biggest iteration of this next chapter is going to be in many ways a transition of generational wealth and generational knowledge and expertise from one group of entrepreneurs to the next.
Rustum Southwell – I can’t help but feel fulfilled that we’ve done quite a lot with the means that we were using. We’ve had an impact.

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