MINORITY LEADERS

The face of female entrepreneurship is becoming a lot less white. Minority women control 44 percent of women-owned businesses in the United States, up from 20 percent in 1997, according to census data and new projections by research firm Womenable—even though “there’s this notion that we don’t exist,” says Esosa Ighodaro, founder of the social media shopping app CoSign and the networking organization Black Women Talk Tech. “Entrepreneurship is very lonely, and even lonelier in minority communities.” Researchers attribute the burst of entrepreneurial activity, led by black and Hispanic women, to both educational progress and economic necessity. “Women have been taking control, frankly, for centuries,” says Kathy McShane of the Small Business Administration’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership. “But now we’re talking about it.”