Black business women across the UK, particularly black female founders have always been outnumbered and under represented compared to their white counterparts in the business world. While there’s been an increase in women starting up their own businesses, the number of UK startups and businesses that are currently owned by black women is still low. Hence there’s still a need for inspirational black female role models to inspire a new generation of aspiring black female entrepreneurs across the UK.
We’ve curated this long list of some of the inspiring black female founders to learn from and also to know more about their brands. However, this is not a complete list so if you know of any other female back entrepreneurs please feel free to let us know about them so that we can add them to our ever growing list.
Danielle Lawrence, founder of Freyda
Danielle is the founder and CEO of Freyda, a cloud-based software that helps financial institutions to process, interpret and analyze data from documents.
To learn more visit https://freyda.io/ to
Rachael Twumasi-Corson and Jocelyn Mate, cofounders of Afrocenchix
Rachael and Jocelyn cofounded Joycelyn and Rachael’s environmentally friendly, effective, natural hair care products handmade in the UK with organic and Fairtrade ingredients.
To learn more visit https://afrocenchix.com/
Josephine Philips, founder of Sojo
Josephine is the founder of a clothing alterations and repairs brand Sojo. The service makes easy for people to connect with local Seamsters through its app and bicycle delivery service – Making fashion circular.
To learn more visit https://www.home.sojo.uk/
Erika Brodnock, cofounder of Kami
Erika is the founder of a parental mobile app brand Kami, which provides instant, trusted information in answer to parents’ urgent questions; followed by access to vetted health and wellness experts who provide more detailed help through video consultation, whenever parents need it. Kami users can access daily wellbeing reports along with targeted suggestions to keep minds healthy.
To learn more visit https://www.usekami.com/
Eve Yankah, founder of BEPPS Snacks
Eve is the founder of a healthy snack food brand BEPPS, which makes plant based snacks that are low in calorie, vegan friendly and gluten free. The products are available across a wide range of retailers in the UK, including Tesco, Asda, Ocado, Amazon, Selfridges and BEPPS Snacks own online store.
To learn more visit https://beppssnacks.com/
Chantelle Bell, cofounder of Syrona Women
Chantelle is the co founder of Syrona Health, a personalised digital health platform for Chronic Gynaecological/Uterine Conditions. Their app Sora has been launched in the UK for those with Endometriosis and PCOS.
To learn more visit https://syronahealth.com/
Kiemu Salmon, co founder of Beautonomy
Kiemu is the co founder of a sustainable beauty brand Beautonomy which offers a cruelty-free makeup range which include personalised, reusable palettes of eyeshadow and vegan makeup products.
To learn more visit https://www.beautonomy.com/
Mariam Jimoh, founder of Oja
Mariam founded Oja, a delivery service app that delivers ethnic produce from local groceries to customers’ doorsteps. OJA also provides a platform to order and deliver favourite authentic international & ethnic groceries from local stores across the UK.
To learn more visit https://my-oja.com/
Sharmadean Reid, founder of BeautyStack and The Stack World
Sharmadean is the founder of the beauty marketplace brand BeautyStack which is a networked marketplace app for influential beauty professionals. The app enables users to post images of their work and their clients can book directly from an image, see what their friends are booking and like and save their favourite treatments.
Simi Lindgren, founder of Yuty
Yuty is an AI-driven beauty marketplace that enables conscious beauty shoppers find the right hair care, skincare, and cosmetic products based on their genetic lifestyle, environment and preferences.
To learn more visit www.yuty.me/
Yodit Stanton, founder of OpenSensors
Yodit is the founder and CEO of OpenSensors, an internet of things company building a connected world that puts people first. It has built a scalable real time IoT messaging engine that can easily process millions of messages a second from any internet connected device. It enables users to quickly create real time smart IoT products by giving the components needed, such as real time data access, security, storage, data analytics, and machine learning.
To learn more visit https://www.opensensors.com/
Megan Bingham-Walker, cofounder of Anansi
Meghan is the founder of Anansi which provides automated goods-in-transit, shippers’ interest and cargo insurance products to ecommerce businesses globally, starting with Offcourse Cover (https://www.offcoursecover.com/), a Shopify app providing insurance for lost, damaged or delayed parcel deliveries.
To learn more visit https://www.withanansi.com/
Elizabeth Nyeko, cofounder of Modularity Grid
Elizabeth is the founder, of Modularity Grid, technology focused on delivering the next generation of low carbon electrical power systems, for terrestrial and aerospace applications.
To learn more visit https://www.modularitygrid.com/
Varaidzo Tendai Moyo, founder of Ruka Hair
Varaidzo is the founder of an ethnic hair and beauty brand Ruka Hair that provides hair extensions that match natural hair texture more curls, more coils, more you.
To learn more visit http://rukahair.com/
Anthea Stephenson, co founder of Wild Radish
Anthea co founded Wild Radish, a food service that delivers a recipe, ingredients and easy-to-follow instructions from some of the UK’s best chefs every fortnight.
To learn more visit http://wild-radish.co.uk/