Jessica Norwood is the Founder of the Runway Project. The Runway Project uses entrepreneurship as a way to close the wealth gap in Black communities by providing pre-seed, friends and family money or what Jessica calls “believe in you money” to startup businesses. Jessica is a past Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellow and BALLE Fellow for local economies and speaks worldwide on the intersection of culture and investing, emerging leadership, voting rights, community investing and rural wealth creation. She is a lifelong Fellow of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and Southern University College of Business, as well as the Political Power Fellow of the Hip Hop Archive at the DuBois Institute of Harvard University.
