2024 Elections- Collateral Damage & Pitching Investors
People talk about the fallout Black women fear following the elections. I never could have imagined I would experience it so quickly.
When one of my former editors reached out to me to help the station cover the Senate race in Maryland, I jumped at the chance.
I have always hated sitting on the sidelines while interesting things were happening, and being able to jump into the action made me feel like I was invited to an exclusive party. Apart from being an adrenaline junkie—which I have been since I was a kid praying to God to make my life an action movie—I wanted all the obsession I had with the news cycle to lead to something productive.
By donning my journalism hat, I was already training my brain to dissociate itself from the results. In those shoes, I report and accept the world as it is, not as I want it to be. But this election cycle, dissociation proved more difficult than I could have imagined.
A few months ago, I received the query response every writer dreams of getting—from an agent I believed could really sell my book idea.
I was ecstatic. I had done my research and found an agent whom I believed had faith in me and my work, someone I thought would give me a shot at doing something I dreamed of doing, something I knew could open doors and move things in the direction I wanted.
I remember stopping everything else I planned to do that day, burying myself in the manuscript to make sure it was good enough, and sending it off.
Then I waited. I was told it could take months for an agent to get back after requesting a proposal, so I pressed on with the other projects I had going on: my startup, freelance work, my two kids. My plate was full with enough work to make the time fly by.
Fast forward to election night. My crew of journalist friends and I braced ourselves; anything could happen—there could be violence, another inconclusive evening, another January 6th.
I was assigned to cover Angela Alsobrooks, who was running as a Democrat in Maryland. She had a formidable opponent in former Governor Larry Hogan but had polled significantly ahead of him for most of the election in the deep blue state and was favored by most pundits to win—which, late into the evening, she did.
But the room was filled with mixed emotions; people were jovial that Alsobrooks won but upset that Kamala Harris, the top of the ticket, lost.
I wasn't surprised by the outcome. And as a Black woman working a job where I needed to be an objective observer, I made an extra effort to dissociate from the outcome. Like a lot of the political junkies, I stayed up late reading the think pieces and reviewing the hot takes until I could stay awake no longer and passed out around 3 a.m.
The next morning, I woke up, made breakfast for my 2- and 4-year-old, whose silly giggles made me laugh too, and sent them off to their schools. Then I checked my email, and the Jenga piece was pulled out, sending my emotions crashing down.
"Given the current world events..."
I read the sentence a few more times.
The agent didn't think she would be successful taking my book to market "given the current world events."
With that, the mirage of dissociation was shattered. I couldn't, because this agent saw the door close on Kamala Harris and decided she couldn't hold it open for me either. By some unfortunate turn of events, Harris's loss directly became my own.
My mind raced. Had she been sitting on my book, waiting to see if America made space for Black women and if they would, in turn, be interested in me?
I had never felt an election loss so personally until that moment. With this loss, the market for Black female voices had shrunk, and my own voice had been squeezed out in the process.
And I guess those are the losses we won't talk about as a country—the collateral damage minorities experience time and time again due to situations completely out of our control.
Talking to Investors
People who know me know I'm a bit of an odd bird.
I'm the type of person who experiences a gut punch like the one above, takes in the pain and turns it into energy like I'm on freaking Dragon Ball Z or something. Don't worry, I was forced to take a minute to process when I had to explain to my husband (who isn't a native English speaker) what the term "glass ceiling" meant and why I felt like I was looking up at one.
But that same day I decided to force the universe to balance out the hand it dealt me, and I secured my first conversation with an investor for our startup.
I had been listening to the podcast "Startup" by Gimlet and was feeling a lot of camaraderie with the narrator, Alex Blumberg. The podcast is nearly 10 years old, but I am just getting around to it.
Like me, Blumberg was a former public radio journalist; like me, he had no idea about the techy startup world apart from what he covered in the business world and what I covered in the edtech space; like me, he had a 2- and a 4-year-old. But unlike me, he was a 40-year-old white dude with a Rolodex of investors and investor friends.
I laughed and I cried while listening to his podcast. It encouraged me to chronicle my own journey more transparently. But I also know that story can't be mine.
I am a Black woman in America, reminded again that the odds—in so many ways—are stacked against me. I don't have a Rolodex of investor friends and associates. And I knew that if I got any type of meeting, I needed to be prepared.
But I also know there are people out there who are tired of the status quo. There are people tired of watching us lose, in the same way I am tired of feeling the losses.
So I searched for investors who might be feeling the pain and wanting to do something about it. I wanted someone who was ready to shatter something—maybe that glass ceiling—because of it all.
I told my cofounder, another woman of color trying to pick up the pieces, "If people are looking to rechannel their energy to see the world in a different way, let's be there to give them a place to channel it."
And with that, I reached out and secured a meeting with my first VC.
Pitching Has Begun
The meeting with those first investors was amazing. Our idea has been validated, and we have taken feedback from each meeting to refine the pitch and product to make it even better for the next one.
The vcs we spoke to were also kind enough to teach us more about the investor world and who we should actually be talking to. With that knowledge, I reached out to some people I knew who had connections, and not only did we get an amazing advisor, but we were also promised introductions as we move to the next stage.
No lie, this process has put me completely outside my comfort zone. Pitching the company, putting myself out there, trying to convey what we're building—it's a process I never imagined I'd find energizing, but here we are.
We've refined the product: JAM CQ is a publication where Americans can learn about business opportunities overseas and how to engage in culturally complex markets, like where I served as a diplomat in Saudi Arabia or where Alice helped find customers for her Y-Combinator startup in China. We are all about building cultural intelligence. We are starting with high-opportunity, culturally complex spaces for Americans and then expanding with a model that brings together B2C and B2B.
I have to say, though, none of this would feel possible or as exhilarating without my partner—my work wife—Alice Shin. She's been absolutely invaluable. We give each other hell sometimes—argue, disagree, push each other—but the truth is, she's amazing. Her insight, her support, her ability to challenge me in ways no one else can—it's the secret sauce behind so much of what we're building.
This whole experience is teaching me that creation isn't just about building something external—it's about building yourself. And yeah, it's hard. But maybe that's the best part.
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