According to 2024 census data, minority-owned businesses represent approximately 22.6% of US employers, totaling around 1.3 million businesses. Yet, traditional economic development often prioritizes attracting massive multinational corporations over supporting the homegrown entrepreneurs who keep our communities alive.

In this episode of The Wealth We Build, host Yessica Holguin is joined by Kimberly Bonner from the Center for Community Wealth (CCW) to discuss why a "local-first" approach is the real key to closing the racial wealth gap.

Kimberly pulls back the curtain on how CCW is serving as a bridge to help micro-businesses overcome the "moat" of institutional procurement. We dive deep into the incredibly successful "Feeding Anchors" catering program, a brand-new "BEST" cohort for skilled trades, and the raw, unglamorized realities of entrepreneurship today, including inflation, skyrocketing rents, and the often-overlooked mental health struggles of small business owners.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The "Local-First" Approach: Why hyper-local investing beats corporate attraction every time.
• Cracking the Institutional Code: How small catering and skilled trade businesses can land lucrative contracts with universities, hospitals, and government agencies.
• The Entrepreneurial Reality Check: Kimberly’s top two pieces of advice for anyone looking to start a business (and why passion isn't enough).
• The Power of Interconnectedness: Moving away from the myth of hyper-individualism to survive economic volatility.
• A 20-Year Vision for Denver: What true democratization and systems change look like for local economies.

Are you a local caterer or a skilled trade business with fewer than 10 employees in the Denver metro area? CCW is launching its next BEST cohort in Fall 2026!

https://www.communitywealth.org/programs/small-business/apply-to-best

Connect with the Center for Community Wealth:

• Website: https://www.communitywealth.org/
• Instagram & Facebook: @CCWDenver
• LinkedIn: Center for Community Wealth

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The Roots of Collective Action: A History of Community Wealth Building

Description: What does it mean to build an economy rooted in dignity, community ownership, and respect? In the inaugural episode of The Wealth We Build, host Yessica Holguin is joined by community champions Michelle Sturm, Patrick Horvath, and Michael Miera to track the grassroots history of the community wealth building movement in metro Denver.

From a fateful 2013 delegation trip to study the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, to an early Denver symposium that almost got the organizers arrested, the guests pull back the curtain on how a passionate, all-volunteer network rejected top-down consultant models to build a self-determined economic ecosystem from the ground up.

Tune in to discover how changing the way anchor institutions, cities, and local entrepreneurs collaborate can successfully rewrite an unfair system, dismantle the myth of the "self-made" individual, and pave a path of "most resistance" to achieve true economic justice.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• The core differences between traditional economic development and collective economics.
• The 12-year history tracking from the early volunteer days of the Community Wealth Building Network to the founding of the Center for Community Wealth.
• How major healthcare and higher education institutions realized they couldn't "clinic their way out" of local poverty.
• Yessica’s personal journey from community organizing in Nicaragua back to a rapidly gentrifying Denver.
• The intentionality required to design wealth-building structures that include, rather than exclude, communities of color and micro-businesses.
• The core pillars of CCW's work