Photo: Getty Images North America
Atlanta-based venture capital firm Fearless Fund is launching a global initiative one year after settling a high-profile lawsuit over its grant program for Black women entrepreneurs.
During a New York City launch event earlier this month, CEO and Founding Partner Arian Simone announced the Fearless Fund Global Initiative, aiming to expand economic inclusion worldwide and advocate for "Fearless Freedom" through demographic equity, per AfroTech.
“This is (as) good for the white Kentucky coal miner as it is the Latino California farmworker,” Simone said at the event. “Demographic equity means delivering the resources, the financial support at a scale that reflects the population. This is something we can all get behind.”
The new initiative comes after the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER), a conservative group led by Edward Blum, filed a lawsuit in 2023, alleging that the Fearless Fund's Strivers Grant, which was only open to Black women entrepreneurs, was racially discriminatory. Fearless Fund settled the case in fall 2024, agreeing to end the grant program but not backing down from its broader mission.
Simone said the lawsuit only reinforced the need for structural change.
“I knew it wasn’t just as simple as having a fund,” she said. “We’re going to have to get policies to change... to open doors so more people can do what we do.”
Following the settlement, Fearless Fund made a seven-figure investment in Zimi, a global e-commerce platform helping small businesses in developing markets. At the September 22 launch of the Fearless Fund Global Initiative, Simone said she would be presenting a petition to the United Nations outlining a global roadmap for demographic equity.
Attendees at the launch included Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), Liberian Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti, CNN anchor Abby Phillip, and civil rights attorney Ben Crump.
“The lawsuit does not define us,” Simone said. “The work that we plan to get done — that’s what defines us.”
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