Angela Benton – NewME founder providing minority entrepreneurs an equal chance at starting up businesses

Angela Benton (pictured), did not let rooms full of men intimidate her back in 2007 when she started her first business. Instead, it’s guided a career dedicated to giving minorities and women equal chances at starting and building successful companies.

Long before Benton founded the fast-growing NewME Accelerator for minority entrepreneurs, she was the lone black woman in Charlotte’s startup and technology circles.

But she knew there had to be others like her around the United States fascinated by technology and the opportunity it offered underrepresented populations, so in 2007, the former IAC web developer and designer created Black Web 2.0, the first media site dedicated to African Americans in technology and new media. And it was during a brainstorming session several years later at a national NewME summit that the seeds for the accelerator were planted.

Benton is determined to have a lasting impact on the still desperately low rates of entrepreneurship among minorities (African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans) and women. According to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, minority-owned startups made up just 8.5 percent of all companies seeking angel investment in the first half of 2013, and only 14.7 percent of them received an investment. That’s likely because just 4.5 percent of angel investors are minorities.

Read more: Upstart Business Journal