Black Wall Street Chamber Relaunches Business Accelerator Program

The Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce relaunched its business accelerator program to help empower entrepreneurs in the Tulsa community.

The NEST Collective program offers a nine-week entrepreneurship cohort designed to help people transform ideas into business plans.

The Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce says the program has been around for years and was founded by the late Sherry Gamble Smith, the former chamber president. During her leadership, over 100 graduates completed the program. 

Chamber President Kuma Roberts says the program was relaunched in partnership with Spirit Bank with the same goal of providing the tools, resources, and mentorship needed to help small businesses thrive.

"Marketing, branding, seed funding, budgeting," Roberts said. "Those are a lot of the topics that are covered and we're bringing in real-world individuals who are currently working in all those spaces to talk to the entrepreneurs, tell them about pitfalls, challenges, and also bright spots and ways that they can sort of avoid the mistakes that have been made by others."

The chamber plans to launch a new cohort in January. The Black Wall Street Chamber says the NEST Accelerator program is committed to helping entrepreneurs succeed both locally and globally.