Black Owned Maine
“I lived in Lewiston until 2008 and then in 2008, I moved to Portland. For me growing up in Maine, it's very confusing. I didn't feel like I belonged in any social circle. I was often just like, “What am I doing? Why can’t I live in Boston? Or like, why can't I live in New York” or just dream of all these, these what if’s? You know, when I moved to Portland, and then I did live in New York City for a bit and when I lived in New York City, it was for a quick six months. It was the most eye opening experience I've ever had in my life to look around and see people that look like me. I mean, I'm mixed race. I'm Cape Verdean and I'm Scottish and Italian. So to look around and see Puerto Rican people and Dominican people and black people and say, ‘Wow, wait, there's a whole world of people that look like me and I am blind to them.’ But yeah, so I graduated from USM last July. And my son, I had my son during that time. So for me, when the pandemic hit I was laid off from my job and I really wanted to do something. You know, people talk about what would you do if you had a month, you know, where you didn't have to go to work and I'm like, ‘Wait, this is my month!’ Yeah, this is my three months. So that's also where this kind of came from in looking. I graduated with a marketing degree so looking for marketing positions, I couldn't seem to find anything. I only found maybe one marketing agency that didn’t have any representation, at least that I could see physically. It is not always the best way to determine things, you know, so I was like, I'm just not going to be the first. I call myself cappuccino color, you know, I'm not gonna be like the first cappuccino person to go in there and say, hey, you know, whatever, so this was kind of a baby of that to let me set up my own thing. I had posted on LinkedIn, I'm like, ‘Hey, marketing graduates, how did you find your first job?’ I didn't get any responses and like a week later, I was like, you know what, it's all good. I found a job. I started my own company, and now I'm the CEO” says Rose Barboza with Black Owned Maine.
Rose Barboza and Jerry Edwards came up with the idea of starting a database featuring Black owned businesses in Maine, not only because it had never existed before but because they would be fulfilling a necessary component of Maine’s small business community. Not only is the database a part of their business, which is going through the process of being a non-profit, but they recently started a grant program, the first of many future expansions of Black Owned Maine.
“We're trying to create a space so that if a new business wants to open up, they can come to us and say, ‘Hey, what can we do? Can you provide us a grant? Can you provide us with consultation services or whatever’, you know, so that we can kind of have that be the basis of, of hopefully a lot of future businesses,” adds Rose.
Rose experienced struggles growing up in a predominantly white state, but after she moved outside of Maine to explore more culturally diverse areas of the country she came back and found that Maine has helped her tremendously with her vision of starting a non-profit. The local community emphasis on small businesses and entrepreneurship has helped immensely.
“Small businesses are the whole economy for the most part...this was finally my chance to say, you know what, let me actually try to make a difference where I am instead of trying to run away somewhere different, especially in a place that entrepreneurship is thriving here. People love to support any local business they possibly can here,” says Rose.