VP Ensures Black Businesses Thrive

Black Americans are leaving their 9-to-5 jobs and are interested in starting their own companies where they are the boss, according to Black Enterprise.

With this shift in the workforce they can, at times, need greater backing and help to get off the ground — something Luc El-Art Severe and his staff at United Way NYC are very interested in helping with.

Luc El-Art Severe wears many hats with his background as a minister, Haitian Roundtable member, and law school professor and has served his community when they were most in need. As the former Senior Advisor and Stakeholder Engagement Lead for the Virgin Islands Governor’s Hurricane Recovery Taskforce or as a volunteer through his annual college, career, and scholarship fair he co-founded with his sister or serving with Double Love Experience Church, Severe finds success is “only worth it if he lifts others as he climbs,” according to the article.

Severe, an active member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc., attributed his mindset and his work experience to make the perfect formula for his current role as vice president of Small Business and Workforce Development with United Way of NYC.

“There has been historical disproportionality of inequities in resources when it comes to Black-owned businesses in NYC and that really revealed itself and exacerbated because of COVID. In NYC, pre-pandemic there were only 2 percent of Black entrepreneurs and Black-owned businesses although 22 percent of New York City residents are Black,” he said.

United Way has served communities around the world and created this network called “Together We Thrive Black Business Network,” which is a coalition that offers access to capital, networking, and technical assistance needed to support the survival, success, and sustainability of Black-owned businesses.

The Morehouse College grad said that during his education he and other students “studied everything Black.”

“We were promoting everything Black but it didn’t stop with that. We also were taught empowerment and different ways that we could advocate and show up for our community because we understood that there was a long history of inequity and injustice that exists in this nation and in this world,” he said, adding that he knew he wanted to be an advocate. “I pursued law and received my doctorate at Thomas Cooley Law School at Western Michigan. I was very adamant in wanting to do community work and wanting to show up for my community, but in a different lens—through changing policy and legislation, those things that give you the rights or tells you what you can or can’t do.”

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Sherri Kolade

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