Release Date: August 27,2024
Capital Talent Development Group Founder Alanna Nicholas Completes Goldman Sachs’ One Million Black Women: Black in Business Program
August 27, 2024, Akron, Ohio — Capital Talent Development Group’s characterful space, with its high ceilings, cadmium orange walls, sprawling windows, and dramatic light fixtures, is at the end of the hall on the second floor of the 150-year-old Everett Building in downtown Akron—once an opera house and a bank, and now renovated and home to office tenants. The office is humble, regal, and warm all at once, much like the business’s principal and founder, Alanna Nicholas, who still teems with energy and inspiration from completing Goldman Sachs’s 10-week One Million Black Women: Black in Business program in June.
Black in Business is part of the investment bank’s $10 billion initiative to drive economic opportunity for one million Black women and seeks to equalize entrepreneurship for Black women by providing free business education to sole proprietors looking to grow their businesses and create generational wealth. Nicholas was the only entrepreneur from Akron accepted to participate in the fifth cohort of the program and was one of 150 women selected from an applicant pool of nearly five thousand.
Seeking Opportunity to Create Opportunity
Nicholas has been tapped into the Northeast Ohio entrepreneurial ecosystem for a while, always seeking partnerships and resources to help her business—which works to build skilled, ready talent for the workforce—flourish. One of these valuable resources has been Cuyahoga Community College. “They send you different opportunities for how to scale and how to have best practices in business, so I take advantage,” Nicholas says. “I like learning.”
Tri-C is one of the local Ohio academic and community partners in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, an initiative designed to help entrepreneurs create jobs and economic opportunity by providing access to education, capital and support services. In late 2023, Nicholas, eager to be a part of the initiative, applied.
She knew it would be a stretch: Although Capital Talent Development Group met the program’s criteria for length of time in existence and revenue generated, Nicholas’s sole proprietorship, at odds with the program’s two-employee requirement, cost her an acceptance. Heidi Szeltner, outreach manager for the Goldman Sachs program at Tri-C, encouraged her to seek opportunity in the OMBW: Black in Business program instead.
Nicholas describes what the initial application and interview screening process were like: “You needed to demonstrate that you had an earning of at least $25,000 minimum. You had to submit your business taxes from the previous two years; you had to demonstrate that you were still in business. You didn’t have to be a million strong—yet—but you at least needed to demonstrate that you were making an investment towards the development, or the growth, of a business.” And, Nicholas emphasizes, she had to be willing to dream big, think outside an exclusively local mindset, and be willing to put in the work.
The Big Apple and Beyond
The no-cost program kicked off with a two-day trip to Goldman Sachs’ headquarters in New York City, where the business owners in the program underwent two days of networking and learning sessions with industry leaders and likeminded women from across the country. Nicholas describes what it was like to walk into the headquarters: “You see all these beautiful quotes from different women that have been in the program. Everything is bold and bright, but it comes with [high] expectations.”
The two-day orientation process in New York was followed by eight weeks of virtual instruction. Goldman Sachs partners with New York University’s Stern School of Business to deliver the 10-week virtual business course. Three days a week, participants logged on to the program portal to take part in lectures from New York University Stern School of Business faculty, have discussions with others in their growth groups, and engage in one-on-one conversations with business advisors as they developed business strategies, identified target market segments, created value proposition statements, delved into financial practices, and more. The commitment for the virtual meetings alone was six hours per week, and on top of that, there was homework.
Dedicating so much time to the program in addition to running her business each day was a challenge, but Nicholas met it readily, determined to learn as much as she could and apply that knowledge to Capital Talent Development Group’s operations.
She was struck by the degree to which Goldman Sachs dedicated time, energy, and expertise to her and every other participant. “They’re just pouring into us to let us know being in business is a big deal, and that [they] really want to provide us with the tools to sustain it, with the end goal of creating generational wealth through entrepreneurship.”
As part of the program, participants create an action plan focusing on next steps for their businesses. Nicholas has made it her goal to secure funding to pilot a Youth Equity Hub that aims to advance the skill development and inclusion of underestimated, untapped youth talent on infrastructure projects connected to the construction, manufacturing, and healthcare industries.
“The Youth Equity Hub will help reduce youth unemployment rates, while also filling shortages of talent in critical industries,” Nicholas says.
Nicholas gained invaluable experience that will serve her as a business owner now and in the future. She described key takeaways that included a new understanding about the importance of branding and marketing her business, learning how to be best prepared to walk into a financial institution to obtain capital to support the growth of her business, and the willingness to unlearn established modes of operating in order to relearn other, better practices in their place.
“You’re really going to get a reality check on everything you thought you knew about being a business owner,” she says. “The program allows you to see what you can do better in being a business owner, and transition from being a founder to, actually, a CEO.”
Nicholas is looking forward to embodying everything it means to be a CEO, including creating documentation for tasks, responsibilities, and processes, as well as managing additional employees. She’s also looking forward to deepening new and existing business partnerships. In the next five years, she envisions a scale-up for Capital Talent Development Group that will hopefully involve developing a strong, small- to mid-sized team, expanding the markets she serves, and being a major contributor to a diverse talent pool that could improve the dynamics of many different workplaces and drive the creation of generational wealth.
Nicholas is grateful to many: the leadership at Goldman Sachs for investing meaningfully in entrepreneurs, Rodney Reasonover at Stark County Community Action Agency for trusting her as a valued partner, Heidi Szeltner at Tri-C for connecting her with opportunity, and several other community partners, new and old, that have helped her learn, grow, and establish legitimacy and clout for her business.
“You don’t know it all,” she muses. “And it’s okay to partner up, and every day go through the process of unlearning to relearn. If I’m not learning something new within a day, I’m not working.”
Start Downtown
Capital Talent Development Group opened in downtown Akron in January 2022 after being selected to receive support through the sixth round of Downtown Akron Partnership’s Start Downtown program, which is funded through a grant from Burton D. Morgan Foundation. Start Downtown brings new businesses to downtown Akron by matching business owners and entrepreneurs with downtown property owners and providing rent assistance for a period of six months.
In alignment with Opportunity Akron and the Elevate Greater Akron strategy, the program encourages new business growth with an emphasis on businesses owned by women and people of color. The program, which began in 2015 as the Pop-Up Retail Program, has catalyzed 19 businesses that are currently operating downtown.