December 6, 2025 • 15 mins
For years, the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts has been working out of temporary offices as they carried out their mission to support Black business owners around the Commonwealth. Now, their dream to find a special place to settle down and create a permanent home for their work has been realized, with the purchase of a new "Sustainability Hub" in Roxbury. Executive Director Nicole Obi returns to the show to talk about the importance of this move, their plans for the space, and the resources they offer Black entrepreneurs and business owners here in Massachusetts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England Weekend.
Each week we come together right here talk about all
the topics important to you and the place where you live.
Thanks again for tuning in this week. I'm Nicole Davis.
There's always something special about having a place to call home,
and that's just not the case for us individuals. It's
also the case for nonprofits and organizations. The Black Economic
(00:29):
Council of Massachusetts has had to move several times over
the years. A dream, though, has always been to find
a special place to settle down and create a permanent
place to engage with entrepreneurs. Now it's happening with the
recent purchase of their new sustainability hub in Roxbury. Thing
is there's a long way to go before that full
dream can be realized, but that's where you can help.
(00:49):
Let's learn more. Nicole Obe, the president and CEO. If
Bechma is back on the show, Nicole, it is great
to have you here again and for people who maybe
tuning in for the first time to hear you give
us a quick down about Bechma and what it is
you do.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
BECHMA. We are a nonprofit organization with a mission to
help build black wealth across the commonwealth, and we do
that through our policy and advocacy work. We also do
it through our programming and we bring people together with
our events. We are an organization that was birthed out
(01:23):
of the twenty fifteen Federals Or Bank of Boston Color
of Wealth study, where it was found that the median
net worth of black Boston household was eight dollars compared
to white Boston households at the time of over two
hundred and fifty five or about two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. And Bechma. Actually, we just celebrated our ten
(01:47):
year anniversary on November twenty fifth.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Congratulations, And you know ten years, Boston has changed a
lot during that time, and you talked about your mission
about you know, that figure never ceases to amaze me
in the worst way. I do feel gratefully that black
business ownership is starting to thrive in parts of Boston,
and you hear about initiatives like Jalen Brown talking about
(02:12):
building a Black Wall Street. You, of course are a
big part of all this success. What does this feel
like watching all this development?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, I mean we've definitely made progress, and so we're
grateful for our founders and all of our members and
all of our allies that have been helpful in that process.
And it definitely takes strong leadership and intentionality to see
those changes. Use Mayor Wu as an example. When she
(02:42):
came into office, she came on the platform that she
was going to do more around addressing the lack of
inclusive procurement in the City of Boston, and they have
more than doubled, almost tripled their results in her first term.
And so, you know, I know sometimes it's hard to
(03:04):
change direction, especially for an institution, but I think that
she's a really good example of some of the positive
change that we've seen around you know, an entrenched issue
like supplier diversity or inclusive maturement, and so that you know,
(03:25):
I think it's a municipal government can do it. Then
that shows that a lot of others, private companies and
others can do it as well. And we're starting to
make good progress in some of those areas, but we
still have a long way to go.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, definitely, And we can talk about the focus for
the next ten years here in a couple of minutes,
But first I want to focus on your new headquarters
because this is a big deal. You've been working if
I remember correctly, you've been working out of a coworking
space over at Roxbury Community College. So this is a
pretty big thing as you now have a space to
call home.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, we've actually worked in four different offices in the
short time that I run BECKMA, beginning in twenty twenty two.
And so one of the pillars for wealth building is
ownership for us here at BECKMA, and that's something that
we advocate for and we tried to support our members with.
(04:21):
We thought it was really important when we had this
opportunity to buy our own home to do so, and
so we were fortunate to get a lot of support
from major foundations, from individual donors, and we were able
to quickly put together a campaign to buy this new
(04:42):
space that will be our headquarters in Roxbury. And so
it's really a big accomplishment we're really proud of. But
it really does speak to the importance of the benefits
of ownership and is stability that it affords people that
a lot of people take for granted, but the black
community in particular has some of the nation's lowest ownership
(05:06):
rates here in Massachusetts, and so that really affects our
ability to build wealth and that was manifest in the
in the twenty fifteen study. So we're you know, our
ability to build wealth is going to depend a lot
upon our ability to gain more ownership.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
And I did notice it's called the Sustainability Hub, which
I really appreciate because you're not just talking about business sustainability,
but you're talking about environmental justice as well.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
That's right, yes, very much. So it's for BECMA Zone
sustainability so that we can actually focus on our work
and not moving. It's for really helping the neighborhood of
Newbian Square and Roxbury as it goes through this transition.
There's an enormous amount of development that's going on in
that neighborhood after decades of of nothing really happening there
(06:03):
in a productive growth type of way. But we want
to make sure that our businesses are able to ride
the wave of development and not get crushed by it,
and so we are trying to support them in growing
and lockstep with the growth that's going on in the neighborhood.
And then lastly, as you said, we're very much focused
for the last several years on climate from both an
(06:28):
environmental and an economic justice perspective. We think it's a
wonderful growth opportunity for our community from a business perspective,
but it also is really important to our community because
not too long ago the city had to study about
the difference in life expectancy being twenty three years between
(06:50):
where our office is located and the back bay. Some
of that is attributable to, you know, it being hotter
and more polluted there than in the back bay, and
so we want to also play our part to help.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, let's talk about the space itself, because renovations, no
matter how big or how small, they're not easy. And
I know that renovating an entire building it takes a
lot of work. But what does the building have to
offer and what are you doing to make it a
space for would be entrepreneurs and business owners and also
for yourselves at the council.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Sure, we have a great exciting vision for the space.
It is right now a two unit condo complex, part
of a larger, larger residential condo complex, and so our
two units on the first floor we're planning on having
that being a demonstration in a showroom and a model
(07:47):
space for what it's like to live, work, and learn
in a climate resilient and sustainable environment, so really well,
you know, seeing a heat pump in action, not just
in a box, actually cooking and having events and demonstrations
on induction stoves because they don't admit the fumes that
(08:13):
gas stoves can admit, especially in an idler dense community
an area. And so we'll have that demonstration space for
our residents but also our businesses to come in to
show off the type of work that they can do.
On the second floor that'll serve as our headquarters, we'll
be able to continue our work helping to accelerate our
(08:34):
businesses and entrepreneurs into the space. We also have a
green roof, so we will be I believe, the third
green roof in the area, which is great. So we'll
be able to build on the positive benefits that green
roofs have for the building itself and then for the neighborhood.
(08:56):
And lastly, I'm very excited about the base and we'd
like to turn that into a maker space for operators.
So think about people who install and maintain your solar panels,
your ev charging stations, other climate related hardware. We want
(09:18):
to give them a space where they can actually do
the assemblies, to do the testing, the demonstrations, and there's
no other place that's like that. Our businesses are not
able to walk into the higher ed institutions or even
into some of the other mit or any of these
(09:40):
other places and actually do the work that we need
for them to help us to grow our climate economy,
and so we need we need a space for them,
and this is a space that we're going to use
for our maker space in our lab.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Wow, this is so cool. You know you are seeing
this renaissance and Nubian Square and really so much of Roxbury.
I can't imagine how excited the business owners are telling
you that they are because they know you're coming and
they know that these resources are on the way.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Hopefully, we have to raise money to do all these renovations,
so we were able to quickly put together a campaign
to purchase the building, but we're estimating that we're going
to need another maybe six million dollars to do these
renovations to bring the Sustainability Hub and all of its
(10:34):
elements to the four So we will be and have
been actively seeking partners and supporters of this work. But
we've gotten some great enthusiastic feedback and support thus far.
But yeah, anybody interested in working with us, we'd love
(10:55):
to work with you.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah, we'll talk in a couple of minutes about how
people can donate, how they can get involved and team
up with you. But I did want to ask you.
You know, we were talking a few minutes about how
the Council's been around for ten years, how Boston is changing,
but there's still so much work to do when it
comes to equity in business and in many other ways.
What is the focus now on the next ten years
(11:16):
for BECMA.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
That's a great question. Our focus really is that we
are looking to create more black employer firms. That is
very key metric for us. Even though the majority of
black owned firms across the Commonwealth are small and many
(11:39):
of them are solopreneurs, but at the moment when they
switch from being their own enterprise to becoming employer firms,
it starts them on the path to accelerated wealth building.
And so that's a key metric for us to help
(11:59):
our businesses achieve that level. When those business owners become wealthier,
they hire black and brown people and the ripple effect
continues from there. And so as a small nonprofit organization.
We feel that we can have the biggest impact by
directly supporting as many businesses possible, but particularly those that
(12:24):
are transitioning or have the opportunity to become employer firms.
And for our current employer firms, we want to help
them to get stronger. So that's really where our work lives.
That's the most important thing that we can be doing
for these firms at this time.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Well, let's talk about how people can then support you.
You mentioned this campaign. You need about six million dollars
to get everything set up and running over at the
sustainability Hub. How can people team up with you, partner
with you, get you this funding, these resources? How can
they do that?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Sure, thank you will. We have a website, it's bechma
dot org. They can reach out to us there. They
can always send an email to info at beechma dot org.
We'd be happy to share with you not only what
are we doing with our sustainability hub, but we actually
have a broader campaign called bechmat ten and that is
(13:22):
to raise twenty five million dollars. We're more than halfway
through that campaign right now. That's for the building, that's
for a loan program that we have for our businesses,
and that is just for general and supporting BECHMA and
the programs that we run until we'd love to tell
you more about it and get your support.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Okay. And you know you are getting ready to leave
the space at the college and everything, but you have
the Business Innovation Center at RCC and I'm sure you
guys still have a strong connection there as well. Right.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Oh, yes, absolutely, We're really so pleased that we were
able to partner with our CC for the space to
be their anchor tenant. We see a lot of activity there.
RCC has also been having quite a few events in
the space and just making good space use of the
(14:11):
space of the community, and you know, I'm I'm I'm
grateful to have them as our neighbors. We also on
the other side we have Franklin Cummings Tech which will
complete their campus shortly, and then there are also three
technical high schools in the area. So this really, I
(14:32):
think is you know, the sort of epicenter of education
and opportunity, especially in the tech space for Massachusetts is
going to be right there and newb and Square, it's
really special.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Nicole Obie. It is always a pleasure to talk with you,
Thank you again for taking time to come back on
the show, and best of luck with the campaign.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Great thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Have a safe and healthy weekend. Please join me again
next week for another edition of the show. I'm Nicole
Davis from WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England Weekend.
Each week we come together right here talk about all
the topics important to you and the place where you live.
Thanks again for tuning in this week. I'm Nicole Davis.
There's always something special about having a place to call home,
and that's just not the case for us individuals. It's
also the case for nonprofits and organizations. The Black Economic
(00:29):
Council of Massachusetts has had to move several times over
the years. A dream, though, has always been to find
a special place to settle down and create a permanent
place to engage with entrepreneurs. Now it's happening with the
recent purchase of their new sustainability hub in Roxbury. Thing
is there's a long way to go before that full
dream can be realized, but that's where you can help.
(00:49):
Let's learn more. Nicole Obe, the president and CEO. If
Bechma is back on the show, Nicole, it is great
to have you here again and for people who maybe
tuning in for the first time to hear you give
us a quick down about Bechma and what it is
you do.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
BECHMA. We are a nonprofit organization with a mission to
help build black wealth across the commonwealth, and we do
that through our policy and advocacy work. We also do
it through our programming and we bring people together with
our events. We are an organization that was birthed out
(01:23):
of the twenty fifteen Federals Or Bank of Boston Color
of Wealth study, where it was found that the median
net worth of black Boston household was eight dollars compared
to white Boston households at the time of over two
hundred and fifty five or about two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. And Bechma. Actually, we just celebrated our ten
(01:47):
year anniversary on November twenty fifth.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Congratulations, And you know ten years, Boston has changed a
lot during that time, and you talked about your mission
about you know, that figure never ceases to amaze me
in the worst way. I do feel gratefully that black
business ownership is starting to thrive in parts of Boston,
and you hear about initiatives like Jalen Brown talking about
(02:12):
building a Black Wall Street. You, of course are a
big part of all this success. What does this feel
like watching all this development?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, I mean we've definitely made progress, and so we're
grateful for our founders and all of our members and
all of our allies that have been helpful in that process.
And it definitely takes strong leadership and intentionality to see
those changes. Use Mayor Wu as an example. When she
(02:42):
came into office, she came on the platform that she
was going to do more around addressing the lack of
inclusive procurement in the City of Boston, and they have
more than doubled, almost tripled their results in her first term.
And so, you know, I know sometimes it's hard to
(03:04):
change direction, especially for an institution, but I think that
she's a really good example of some of the positive
change that we've seen around you know, an entrenched issue
like supplier diversity or inclusive maturement, and so that you know,
(03:25):
I think it's a municipal government can do it. Then
that shows that a lot of others, private companies and
others can do it as well. And we're starting to
make good progress in some of those areas, but we
still have a long way to go.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, definitely, And we can talk about the focus for
the next ten years here in a couple of minutes,
But first I want to focus on your new headquarters
because this is a big deal. You've been working if
I remember correctly, you've been working out of a coworking
space over at Roxbury Community College. So this is a
pretty big thing as you now have a space to
call home.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, we've actually worked in four different offices in the
short time that I run BECKMA, beginning in twenty twenty two.
And so one of the pillars for wealth building is
ownership for us here at BECKMA, and that's something that
we advocate for and we tried to support our members with.
(04:21):
We thought it was really important when we had this
opportunity to buy our own home to do so, and
so we were fortunate to get a lot of support
from major foundations, from individual donors, and we were able
to quickly put together a campaign to buy this new
(04:42):
space that will be our headquarters in Roxbury. And so
it's really a big accomplishment we're really proud of. But
it really does speak to the importance of the benefits
of ownership and is stability that it affords people that
a lot of people take for granted, but the black
community in particular has some of the nation's lowest ownership
(05:06):
rates here in Massachusetts, and so that really affects our
ability to build wealth and that was manifest in the
in the twenty fifteen study. So we're you know, our
ability to build wealth is going to depend a lot
upon our ability to gain more ownership.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
And I did notice it's called the Sustainability Hub, which
I really appreciate because you're not just talking about business sustainability,
but you're talking about environmental justice as well.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
That's right, yes, very much. So it's for BECMA Zone
sustainability so that we can actually focus on our work
and not moving. It's for really helping the neighborhood of
Newbian Square and Roxbury as it goes through this transition.
There's an enormous amount of development that's going on in
that neighborhood after decades of of nothing really happening there
(06:03):
in a productive growth type of way. But we want
to make sure that our businesses are able to ride
the wave of development and not get crushed by it,
and so we are trying to support them in growing
and lockstep with the growth that's going on in the neighborhood.
And then lastly, as you said, we're very much focused
for the last several years on climate from both an
(06:28):
environmental and an economic justice perspective. We think it's a
wonderful growth opportunity for our community from a business perspective,
but it also is really important to our community because
not too long ago the city had to study about
the difference in life expectancy being twenty three years between
(06:50):
where our office is located and the back bay. Some
of that is attributable to, you know, it being hotter
and more polluted there than in the back bay, and
so we want to also play our part to help.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, let's talk about the space itself, because renovations, no
matter how big or how small, they're not easy. And
I know that renovating an entire building it takes a
lot of work. But what does the building have to
offer and what are you doing to make it a
space for would be entrepreneurs and business owners and also
for yourselves at the council.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Sure, we have a great exciting vision for the space.
It is right now a two unit condo complex, part
of a larger, larger residential condo complex, and so our
two units on the first floor we're planning on having
that being a demonstration in a showroom and a model
(07:47):
space for what it's like to live, work, and learn
in a climate resilient and sustainable environment, so really well,
you know, seeing a heat pump in action, not just
in a box, actually cooking and having events and demonstrations
on induction stoves because they don't admit the fumes that
(08:13):
gas stoves can admit, especially in an idler dense community
an area. And so we'll have that demonstration space for
our residents but also our businesses to come in to
show off the type of work that they can do.
On the second floor that'll serve as our headquarters, we'll
be able to continue our work helping to accelerate our
(08:34):
businesses and entrepreneurs into the space. We also have a
green roof, so we will be I believe, the third
green roof in the area, which is great. So we'll
be able to build on the positive benefits that green
roofs have for the building itself and then for the neighborhood.
(08:56):
And lastly, I'm very excited about the base and we'd
like to turn that into a maker space for operators.
So think about people who install and maintain your solar panels,
your ev charging stations, other climate related hardware. We want
(09:18):
to give them a space where they can actually do
the assemblies, to do the testing, the demonstrations, and there's
no other place that's like that. Our businesses are not
able to walk into the higher ed institutions or even
into some of the other mit or any of these
(09:40):
other places and actually do the work that we need
for them to help us to grow our climate economy,
and so we need we need a space for them,
and this is a space that we're going to use
for our maker space in our lab.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Wow, this is so cool. You know you are seeing
this renaissance and Nubian Square and really so much of Roxbury.
I can't imagine how excited the business owners are telling
you that they are because they know you're coming and
they know that these resources are on the way.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Hopefully, we have to raise money to do all these renovations,
so we were able to quickly put together a campaign
to purchase the building, but we're estimating that we're going
to need another maybe six million dollars to do these
renovations to bring the Sustainability Hub and all of its
(10:34):
elements to the four So we will be and have
been actively seeking partners and supporters of this work. But
we've gotten some great enthusiastic feedback and support thus far.
But yeah, anybody interested in working with us, we'd love
(10:55):
to work with you.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah, we'll talk in a couple of minutes about how
people can donate, how they can get involved and team
up with you. But I did want to ask you.
You know, we were talking a few minutes about how
the Council's been around for ten years, how Boston is changing,
but there's still so much work to do when it
comes to equity in business and in many other ways.
What is the focus now on the next ten years
(11:16):
for BECMA.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
That's a great question. Our focus really is that we
are looking to create more black employer firms. That is
very key metric for us. Even though the majority of
black owned firms across the Commonwealth are small and many
(11:39):
of them are solopreneurs, but at the moment when they
switch from being their own enterprise to becoming employer firms,
it starts them on the path to accelerated wealth building.
And so that's a key metric for us to help
(11:59):
our businesses achieve that level. When those business owners become wealthier,
they hire black and brown people and the ripple effect
continues from there. And so as a small nonprofit organization.
We feel that we can have the biggest impact by
directly supporting as many businesses possible, but particularly those that
(12:24):
are transitioning or have the opportunity to become employer firms.
And for our current employer firms, we want to help
them to get stronger. So that's really where our work lives.
That's the most important thing that we can be doing
for these firms at this time.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Well, let's talk about how people can then support you.
You mentioned this campaign. You need about six million dollars
to get everything set up and running over at the
sustainability Hub. How can people team up with you, partner
with you, get you this funding, these resources? How can
they do that?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Sure, thank you will. We have a website, it's bechma
dot org. They can reach out to us there. They
can always send an email to info at beechma dot org.
We'd be happy to share with you not only what
are we doing with our sustainability hub, but we actually
have a broader campaign called bechmat ten and that is
(13:22):
to raise twenty five million dollars. We're more than halfway
through that campaign right now. That's for the building, that's
for a loan program that we have for our businesses,
and that is just for general and supporting BECHMA and
the programs that we run until we'd love to tell
you more about it and get your support.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Okay. And you know you are getting ready to leave
the space at the college and everything, but you have
the Business Innovation Center at RCC and I'm sure you
guys still have a strong connection there as well. Right.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Oh, yes, absolutely, We're really so pleased that we were
able to partner with our CC for the space to
be their anchor tenant. We see a lot of activity there.
RCC has also been having quite a few events in
the space and just making good space use of the
(14:11):
space of the community, and you know, I'm I'm I'm
grateful to have them as our neighbors. We also on
the other side we have Franklin Cummings Tech which will
complete their campus shortly, and then there are also three
technical high schools in the area. So this really, I
(14:32):
think is you know, the sort of epicenter of education
and opportunity, especially in the tech space for Massachusetts is
going to be right there and newb and Square, it's
really special.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Nicole Obie. It is always a pleasure to talk with you,
Thank you again for taking time to come back on
the show, and best of luck with the campaign.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Great thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Have a safe and healthy weekend. Please join me again
next week for another edition of the show. I'm Nicole
Davis from WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio
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