Jessica Norwood

Research Collaborator

Jessica Norwood has been a contributor to the research process since 2018, through participating in numerous interviews and reviewing draft content for the book manuscript Beloved Economies.

JESSICA NORWOOD

Named to Essence Magazines “50 Entrepreneurs to Watch” list, Jessica Norwood is a financial activist, impact investor and social entrepreneur. She is the founder of the Runway Project, a suite of strategies that aim to close the racial wealth gap for good. Jessica is well known for what she calls “Believe in You Money”, placing early capital or a "Friends and Family" round into African American companies nationwide. 

Jessica is a former board member of the famed Highlander Research and Education Center, the same place that trained Dr. King, and is trained in nonviolence organizing, anti-racism and popular education facilitation. Today, Jessica serves on boards whose work unlocks the spirit of imagination and creativity needed to repair broken systems and practices. She serves on the boards of Emergent Strategies Ideation Institute, Zeal Multi Media Worker Cooperative and Society of Clotilda, which promotes wellness and healing among black women as a strategy to repair the violence inherited by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Route. 

Widely recognized for her groundbreaking work in economic disruption, Jessica is an Center for Economic Democracy fellow, an immediate past fellow for RSF Social Finance Integrated Capital Fellowship, Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellow, a former BALLE Fellow for local economies (Common Future), a lifelong Fellow of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and Southern University College of Business for Emerging Leaders, as well as the Political Power and Social Change Fellow of the Hip Hop Archive at the Hutchins Center of Harvard University. Her innovative work has been profiled in NPR, Next City, Essence Magazine, Conscious Company, Fast Company and NY Times Best Selling author of “Decolonizing Wealth”, Edgar Villanova, calls her work the “medicine” modern philanthropy and investment need.  Jessica splits time between Alabama and California.