Company Description:
Established in 1916 by an interracial group of community leaders, the Chicago Urban League (www.TheChicagoUrbanLeague.com) began as a resettlement organization assisting African-American migrants arriving in Chicago from the rural South. Today the civil rights organization empowers African-Americans by providing a unique and broad range of powerful resources and tools focused on economic development. The Chicago Urban League is led by and draws expertise from a Board of Directors comprised of Chicago's more prominent corporate executives and leading entrepreneurs with strong industry and functional expertise. Leveraging strong and growing relationships with the business community and government, the League develops programs and partnerships and does advocacy to address the need for employment, entrepreneurship, affordable commercial real estate and quality education. The Chicago Urban League is an affiliate of the National Urban League (www.nul.org), the nation's oldest and largest community-based movement devoted to empowering African-Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream. The Chicago Urban League recently launched project NEXT, three new economic development programs, which will help build shared and sustainable wealth within Chicago's African American community: 1. Employment Diversity Program - focuses on recruiting and placing skilled, temporarily displaced workers as well as coaching, training, and developing entry, mid-, and senior level African-American managers. 2. Entrepreneurship Center - provides new business acquisition and capacity building services as well as financing to small businesses that generate revenues between $100,000 and $1 million, specifically professional service, construction, and retail businesses. 3. Commercial Real Estate Development Initiative - supports commercial real estate developers and connects them with retail/office/industrial real estate development opportunities in Chicago's African-American communities. In addition, the League recently forged a partnership with Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management (www.kellogg.northwestern.edu), which is one of the country's most prominent training and research institutions for entrepreneurs, managers, and corporate executives. As the academic partner for the Entrepreneurship Center, Kellogg will help staff the Center with graduate students and faculty. Specifically, they will design the training and coaching models to counsel minority-owned businesses in marketing their products and services, in securing contracts with private sector companies and governmental agencies and in financing their businesses.
Established in 1916 by an interracial group of community leaders, the Chicago Urban League (www.TheChicagoUrbanLeague.com) began as a resettlement organization assisting African-American migrants arriving in Chicago from the rural South. Today the civil rights organization empowers African-Americans by providing a unique and broad range of powerful resources and tools focused on economic development. The Chicago Urban League is led by and draws expertise from a Board of Directors comprised of Chicago's more prominent corporate executives and leading entrepreneurs with strong industry and functional expertise. Leveraging strong and growing relationships with the business community and government, the League develops programs and partnerships and does advocacy to address the need for employment, entrepreneurship, affordable commercial real estate and quality education. The Chicago Urban League is an affiliate of the National Urban League (www.nul.org), the nation's oldest and largest community-based movement devoted to empowering African-Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream. The Chicago Urban League recently launched project NEXT, three new economic development programs, which will help build shared and sustainable wealth within Chicago's African American community: 1. Employment Diversity Program - focuses on recruiting and placing skilled, temporarily displaced workers as well as coaching, training, and developing entry, mid-, and senior level African-American managers. 2. Entrepreneurship Center - provides new business acquisition and capacity building services as well as financing to small businesses that generate revenues between $100,000 and $1 million, specifically professional service, construction, and retail businesses. 3. Commercial Real Estate Development Initiative - supports commercial real estate developers and connects them with retail/office/industrial real estate development opportunities in Chicago's African-American communities. In addition, the League recently forged a partnership with Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management (www.kellogg.northwestern.edu), which is one of the country's most prominent training and research institutions for entrepreneurs, managers, and corporate executives. As the academic partner for the Entrepreneurship Center, Kellogg will help staff the Center with graduate students and faculty. Specifically, they will design the training and coaching models to counsel minority-owned businesses in marketing their products and services, in securing contracts with private sector companies and governmental agencies and in financing their businesses.