April 4, 2025
Dreena Whitfield-Brown is one among solely eight Black ladies acknowledged as a 2025 Inc. Feminine Founders 500 honoree.
Dreena Whitfield-Brown is one among solely eight Black ladies acknowledged as a 2025 Inc. Feminine Founders 500 honoree.
The popularity hasn’t set in but.
“I’m nonetheless processing it,” she informed BLACK ENTERPRISE as she mirrored on her journey. “I began my firm in my lounge. I didn’t have any purchasers and didn’t even know find out how to do a contract. Google was my finest good friend. For me to be featured as an Inc. feminine founder is nothing however God.”
Whitfield-Brown’s journey started with a frustration that Black ladies know all too effectively: being handed over for alternatives. Analysis from Harvard Kennedy College particulars the distinctive challenges Black ladies face within the office. The research discovered that when Black ladies begin their careers working with a better proportion than their white colleagues, they usually tend to go away their jobs sooner and are much less prone to be promoted.
She had had sufficient of corporations providing internships regardless of her work expertise. So, she began her personal public relations company and gave start to her first child, WhitPR, in 2010. It’s now one of many main minority-owned corporations within the nation — a good distance from her humble beginnings when she launched the company in the lounge of her one-bedroom condominium with no purchasers or media contacts.
Your Circle Issues: How Buddies Obtained Her Began
Whitfield-Brown would be the first to inform aspiring new enterprise house owners to be affected person and make the most of the assets. Her first purchasers had been the individuals in her inside circle.
“It was a little bit of trial and error,” she mentioned. “One in every of my first purchasers was one among my shut mates. We had been constructing our companies on the identical time, and she or he was the right case research for me.”
Success didn’t occur in a single day, and neither did the cash. She labored a retail job for 3 years to make ends meet. Nevertheless, as she continued balancing a profession and constructing her model, others took word, and new purchasers began coming in. Her first huge alternative was for former Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s nonprofit.
“I received that contract to see phrase of mouth. They in the end turned my first [big] paying shopper, which then opened extra doorways.”
WhitPR is an built-in strategic communications company that shapes and amplifies culture-driven narratives. The company champions cultural creators, moments, and actions. Its purchasers characterize the social impression area, private care, life-style, and athletic industries.
Her portfolio of purchasers consists of Black Ambition, Black Love, Inc., Hallmark Mahogany, Morrow Hospitality, Prudential Monetary, Thread Magnificence, the Warner Music Group Social Justice Fund, and a lot extra.
Black Ladies Can Have It All, However It Takes Steadiness
Let Whitfield-Brown be proof that Black ladies can have all of it regardless of the continuing conversations and unsolicited research about how Black ladies are thrice as seemingly as white ladies by no means to marry.
Her then-boyfriend turned now-husband has been supporting her from the start. When she’s not working, the duo are seemingly at AAU basketball video games on the weekends or at birthday events for his or her most demanding purchasers (their kids), all whereas she continues to scale her model.
Whenever you ask how she does it, she says remedy has helped her handle her many hats.
“My therapist has talked me out of bringing my laptop computer into my bed room as a result of that’s my sacred area,” she admits. “I nonetheless wrestle with that as a result of I’m the kind that if I can’t get it carried out throughout the day, I’ll get it carried out after we’ve got dinner and put the children down, however that doesn’t enable me time to pour into myself.”
What’s Subsequent For Dreena Whitfield-Brown?
As somebody who prides herself on staying behind the scenes to make sure her purchasers have the highlight, it can seemingly take a while for her to rejoice and absorb all of her accomplishments, which she rightfully deserves.
Whitfield-Brown says she’s going to proceed to scale her enterprise, however her subsequent huge job is elevating the following technology of various entrepreneurs.
“It’s a significant accomplishment that I’ve made the Inc. listing, however I’m one among solely eight Black ladies and the one one from New Jersey,” she informed BE. “I really feel that it speaks volumes to the work that’s nonetheless wanted to raise various entrepreneurs.”
She added, “It makes me much more keen about persevering with to do the work and to offer alternatives for not simply myself, however only for the following technology of Black ladies in PR and entrepreneurship.”
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