Jomaree Pinkard is the CEO of Pronghorn, a business dedicated to cultivating the next generation of Black founders, executive leaders and entrepreneurs in the spirits industry. The company is committed to bridging the diversity and inclusion gap in the spirits industry while pushing to invest in 57 Black-owned brands, fill 1,800 industry roles in the next decade, and produce $2.4 billion in economic value for the Black community.
Pronghorn was a sponsor for Black Enterprise‘s Disruptor Summit, and spoke with rolling out about the partnership.
How did this partnership with Black Enterprise and Pronghorn happen?
When you think about Black Enterprise in general, since 1970, they’ve been schooling all things African American business, and Black excellence. Pronghorn’s mission is to show up in those moments, all day with an all-Black bar, so here we are in partnership with them for year one. Hopefully, this is a long-term partnership through our associative properties. We are so excited about being relevant and being in the same space as Black excellence. We learned so many things, and we talked about community, content, commerce, and how those things play into each other. There’s nothing more exciting than being in a space like this.
What does it mean to you to be a disrupter?
To disrupt means to interrupt, alter and change a process or an activity for the good. This is all about impact and commercial impact. At Pronghorn, we are trying to change the face of the spirits industry by adding more Black representation across the horizon. We are so focused on our Black entrepreneurs and our Black talent who want to be inside the actual spirits industry.
What do you think a summit like this can do for entrepreneurs?
This is about not only understanding and accelerating your business, but this is also about inspiring and planting seeds that, you too, can be an entrepreneur. We know [it’s] a hard journey and we don’t know everything in this community, but if you put it all together, you can know everything takes a little bit of time. The energy, the effort, the people, the connections, and the information was all at the summit.
