Cameka Smith was 29 when Chicago Public Schools laid her off in 2009, and she had been working since she was 12.
She had a master’s degree and a plan with an exit in it. “I’m going to just take a year off and see how I can grow this business and then I’ll go back to work,” she said.
She never went back. Seventeen years later The BOSS Network has reached more than 200,000 women, invested in more than 100 Black women founders and trained more than 10,000 leaders and entrepreneurs.
It did not begin as an entrepreneurship organization. “In the beginning, it wasn’t really just about entrepreneurship,” she said. “It was really about just Black women and us trying to find our ways to success.” The first summer events drew 200 to 300 people and the website came about six months after that. By 2010 Forbes had listed the site twice, among the top 100 websites for women and the top 10 for women in careers and entrepreneurship, and Smith and Oprah were the only two Black women on the list. A year into the business she toured five cities.
She says the instinct came from home. “It was just instilled in me to always give back, to serve people,” she said. “And so that was just my heart.”
Then the money arrived. Sage began supporting the network in 2014. The Boss Impact Fund launched in 2022 and raised roughly $1.5 million for 100 Black women founders. Through Divine Nine, $250,000 went across four sororities and supported about 20 founders. Pathways to Success carries a $25,000 prize and a full-year scholarship to Boss Business University. A report called Voices of Strength was built from interviews with 40 Black women founders.
Now the money is leaving. “DEI has pretty much been diminished across brands and a lot of those programs supported communities like mines,” Smith said. “A lot of that funding has been depleted.” She is plain about who pays for that. “It’s been a struggle, not just for the founders that we support, but also for us as a community.”
What is left is the thing she built in the year she gave herself, before any brand had a budget line for it. “I’m very proud of what I’ve built,” she said. “I have a community of women that really love and support me, and they value what we do. And that means a lot. That’s my legacy.”
