As a result of her professional experience and doctoral research, Dr. White developed an evidence-based entrepreneurship training model that specifically addresses the ancestral narrative and lived experience of Black entrepreneurs using a lens of racial equity, the Framework for Dynastic Wealth™.

Dr. LaTanya White Helps Center for Penn State Student Entrepreneurship BRACE For Impact™

Dr. LaTanya White, Founder and Principal of Concept Creative Group, brought her evidence-based approach to racial equity in entrepreneurship to the Penn State entrepreneurship ecosystem. Working with Ted Graef, Professor of Practice and Director of PSU Engineering Entrepreneurship and his colleagues across the Center for Penn State Student Entrepreneurship, Dr. White served as a guest lecturer, guest pitch coach, keynote speaker, and design sprint co-facilitator for the students, faculty and staff of Penn State.

Click here to learn more about what Dynastic Wealth™ could mean for Penn State’s student founders of color.

Below, check out Dr. White’s contribution to the Spring 2022 Executive Leadership Council Research Journal that begins on page 19. Dr. White applied her insights on the transfer of knowledge and access—aspects of the Dynastic Wealth™ framework that show up as the Wealth of Knowledge and Relational Wealth—in Black leadership development spaces. 

Title: Dynastic and Generative Intent for First-Generation Black Wealth Creators in a Modern Racial Enclave Economy

Abstract

Professor White’s dissertation study explores the underlying causes of the racial wealth gap between Black and White Americans: the absence of intergenerational wealth transfers in Black business families. As American wealth becomes concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, the data reveals that one-third of the 400 wealthiest Americans inherited their wealth from the entrepreneurial endeavors of earlier generations in their family, some creating entrepreneurial dynasties.

An indelible aspect of dynastic intent and succession planning is the construct of generativity. Generativity is practiced through leading, nurturing, promoting, and teaching the next generation to create things that “move down the generational chain and connect to a future” (Kotre, 1996). There is little research that informs us about the generative intent of Black entrepreneurs. First-generation Black wealth creators (G1-BWC) operating in the beauty industry with dynastic and generative intent were the target population for this study.

Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) determined that the paradigmatic ethos and frame of mind that developed from the lived experience of the study participants included A Celebration of Blackness, Black Mothers- A Guiding Light, Destined for Purposed Work, Our Health- Our Wealth, and You Can’t Pay It Back.

The themes that emerged from the analysis imply that entrepreneurial education and training for first-generation Black entrepreneurs with dynastic intent must contextualize the Black entrepreneurial experience. 

Dynastic Wealth™ is a model for wealth-building the encompasses the lived experience and ancestral narrative of Black and African American entrepreneurs. It is a comprehensive approach to the entrepreneurial training process that has been contextualized for the Black entrepreneurial experience and is designed through a lens of racial equity.