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A young Detroit business whiz snags fresh attention after being profiled in two national magazines.
Gwen Jimmere, 34-year-old chief executive of a hair products manufacturer she founded, ranks on a new list that includes Beyoncé Knowles-Caerter, LeBron James, Serena Williams, John Legend, Leslie Odom Jr., Anna DuVernay and Colin Kaepernick.
Jimmere earns the No. 94 spot on a new list of The 100 Most Influential African Americans, posted Tuesday by The Root. The news site's eighth annual list salutes achievers in politics, social justice , the arts, business, science and sports "who are responsible for the year's most significant cultural moments, social movements and big ideas."
The Detroiter is introduced to readers as the head of a "successful natural-hair-care business" that she launched in July 2011. The high-profile news and commentary site says:
Jimmere has a gorgeous head of hair and an entrepreneurial mind, both of which have helped her be her best testimonial. The Detroit-based CEO is a history-maker as the first black woman to patent a natural-hair-care product and a moneymaker who has turned Naturalicious, the rapidly growing business she launched with just $32 in the bank, into a seven-figure brand.
She uses her growing enterprise to give back to the community: She intentionally hires employees for her production team who are overcoming mental and physical challenges and co-founded Pitch Proof, a platform to coach and prepare aspiring entrepreneurs for the process of pitching their business ideas to potential investors.
Jimmere, who began her career in marketing, is a Cleveland native who earned a business administration degree from Kent State University in 2003. She added a master's in communications from that Ohio campus in 2008 and joined Ford Motor Co. the next year as a global digital communications manager.
She and others on The Root 100 list, selected partly from public nominations, are described as "people who, over the past 12 months, have defined the black experience in America."
At a time when the country continues to devalue black lives at every turn, these are the people who step forward to remind the world that not only do black lives matter, but that it is black people who have helped shape and influence every part of this country.
Since 2009, The Root has compiled a list of the 100 newsmakers and game changers, the innovators and the rule breakers, ages 25-45, who excel across multiple disciplines.
Gwen Jimmere: "All of my friends and family members were also spending this amount of time on their hair." (Facebook photo)
Jimmere was profiled last September in Black Enterprise magazine and six months ago by Inventors Digest. In the March cover story, Caitlin Friedrich describes the path to entrepreneurship:
Jimmere’s road to patent owner and entrepreneur was bumpy. After a few failed attempts at starting businesses for which she did not truly have a passion, Jimmere found success when she stumbled upon the solution to a problem that plagues many women with coarse or curly hair.
Having written off chemical relaxers when the documentary "Good Hair" opened her eyes to their toxic effects, Jimmere found that, to wear her hair naturally, each week she had to spend two to four hours washing and deep conditioning her hair. “I was finding that all of my friends and family members were also spending this amount of time on their hair. I asked, ‘Who has time for that?’ ”
The solution-driven Jimmere began researching and mixing ingredients in her kitchen with the goal of getting her “wash day” down to one hour or less. Once she found the right formula, friends and family became curious, and soon she was selling her product via word of mouth.
The Whole Foods chain now stocks her Naturalicious products. Next Tuesday, Jimmere will be the keynote speaker at a Grand Rapids Opportunities for Women (GROW) conference.
"Girls rule the world," she says in a recent Facebook post.
