In the pandemic, some businesses were hit harder than others. Hair salons, for example, were not deemed “essential” and were ordered to close. For Black women salon owners, this was a particularly tough blow, says Breann Davis, whose work at P&G focuses on the multicultural hair business. 

“Black women are actually the largest growing group of entrepreneurs, but they’re also the most underfunded,” Davis says.

Davis runs P&G’s My Black Is Beautiful, an online community for Black women made up of 2.5 million members. When the site’s members started pointing out salon owners’ impact from the pandemic, Davis’s team raced into action. Partnering with African American hair and skin care producer Bronner Bros., the multicultural hair care team helped to establish the Beauty & Barber Relief Fund, which gave grants to salon owners and beyond that. My Black is Beautiful also made a sizable contribution to non-profit organization Styles4Kidz to enable virtual hair care education programming.

Watch this video to learn more about MBIB’s strategy to support and promote Black women and Black culture through community and commerce.