Breaking the Cycle: Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Minority Funding
Authored by J. Byron Brazier, this book illuminates pathways to navigate financial institutions and pave the way for positive, generational changes. The book sheds light on emerging alternatives to traditional banking institutions for funding, describing them as promising opportunities while acknowledging their limitations and risks.
Brazier is a cultural architect and institutional development strategist focused on long-term economic alignment in historically under-capitalized Black communities, currently lead developer for the Woodlawn Central Project redefining a cultural and commercial district of Chicago’s South side. His contention: Through dismantling financial barriers and promoting diversity within supply chains, funders have the power to spearhead transformative change, nurturing resilient communities and strengthening regional economies.
Breaking the Cycle argues that innovative strategies such as targeting financial support, collaborating with community organizations, and diversifying funding models are key to achieving both social impact and financial objectives. Diversifying supply chains by including minority-owned businesses not only promotes social equity but also enhances business resilience and innovation, Brazier contends, noting that diverse supply chains exhibit greater adaptability in dynamic markets, driving better performance and fostering vibrant, self-sustaining communities.
Failure Is An Option: Reflections of a Silicon Valley CEO
Author Mike Grossman gathers 44 in-the-trenches essays to reveal what leadership really looks like when the cameras aren’t rolling: the moments of absurdity, fear, luck, and endurance that make or break a company and the person leading it. Unflinchingly honest and darkly funny, the book dismantles the myths of startup success and offers an insider’s view of what it means to build under pressure.
The author is a six-time Silicon Valley CEO whose nearly 30-year storied career leading early-stage, venture-funded technology companies includes raising capital from venture firms, public corporations, and angel investors; managing boardroom crises; building great teams; and navigating moments when everything seemed one bad quarter away from collapse.
For founders, investors, and anyone who has ever wondered what Silicon Valley is really like, Failure Is An Option offers an antidote to the glossy founder myth and a reminder that authenticity, humility, and a sense of humor are what keep you in the game.
Business is Simple: From a Family Cottage Business to World Processing and Markets
Former Perdue Farms CFO and Handy Seafood owner Terry Conway shares a three-part framework that guided him through five decades of high-stakes decisions and industry upheaval: Continuously develop superior products; Process at a competitive advantage; Develop leads for sales to close.
In 1961 Conway left a career as CFO of Perdue Farms to take the helm of a soft crab company in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay area and stepped into chaos. “Resources were scarce, decisions were based on limited experience, and crucial business functions needed to be built from scratch,” he says in his introduction to Business is simple.
What followed was a decades-long journey of risk, reinvention and global expansion that transformed Handy Seafood into a $60 million international brand. Business is Simple retraces the risks, competition, obstacles, rebellions, mistakes and government barriers Conway encountered and how he overcame them. Among many “Indiana Jones-like” adventures, readers travel with him to a tilapia farm in Costa Rica, a beachhead in Thailand and a crabmeat startup in India as his core values and acumen for innovation help revolutionize the soft crab industry and expand his company’s reach.
Part memoir, part manual, part survival story, Business is Simple delivers a wealth of wisdom and strategies for entrepreneurs, business leaders, family-owned companies and recent college graduates—anyone looking for real-world applications of business principles.
