00:00As a way to celebrate entrepreneurial prowess, Essence and Pinesaw have partnered for the second year to release the Build Your Legacy contest, a $100,000 grant awarded to one black female entrepreneur to support her business, as well as six months of business coaching with Nicole Walters.
00:17The entries are in, and now it's time to introduce you to our finalists. Meet Niani Tolbert of Hire Black Now.
00:24Hi, my name is Niani Tolbert, and I am the founder and CEO of Hire Black Now. We are on a mission to get 10,000 black women hired, trained, and promoted. And not only that, we want them to realize their worth. So get what they deserve. Black women are out here doing things and helping the community, and they need to be poured right back into.
00:46Last year, I was furloughed from my job as a technical recruiter, and I was really afraid of what the job market would look like for me.
00:56I started to think about how can I help others to get my mind off of where I was at.
01:02And so I ended up asking my LinkedIn network for support to help 19 black women get resume review sessions last year for Juneteenth.
01:11Over 500 black women reached out within 48 hours asking for help, and I realized how necessary it was. We were able to place people in jobs at Microsoft, Disney, Amazon.
01:24We were also able to help the members of our community increase their total compensation by $825,000.
01:30My reaction when I learned my business as a finalist was exceptionally grateful and extremely validating.
01:40I have really put so much into this business, and it feels so good to see we're being recognized for our work.
01:50Entry process for the Build Your Legacy contest challenged me to raise the bar because I started to get out of the way of myself in order to dream.
02:02Putting those words on that website and saying what we would do with that money made me actualize what higher black will be in the future.
02:12I stand Nicole Walters, and through the Build Your Legacy contest, I think that she would be the perfect business coach.
02:20What she does with packaging content and being able to train people through courses is what we want to do with Hire Black Now.
02:28With the support of the Pine Salt and Essence Build Your Legacy contest, we would be able to really reinvest into the community.
02:37So this means us hiring additional support in order to be able to give a more hands-on approach into helping black women in our community navigate their careers.
02:49This will mean that we can invest into additional resources, whether it's technology or platforms.
02:56And this will help us launch our Leadership and Career Coaching Group program, where we're going to be able to not only think about the breadth, so how many people we can help at once, but how can we help everyone in their personalized needs.
03:13I want to see more black women get hired.
03:16I want to see more black women getting trained.
03:19And I want to see more black women getting promoted.
03:21Vote for us for the Pine Salt and Essence Build Your Legacy contest.
03:26You've heard from Niani Tolbert.
03:28Now it's time that we hear from you.
03:30Please vote for the entrepreneur that you think should win $100,000 at Essence.com slash your legacy.
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