How One Black Entrepreneur is Helping Others Overcome Challenges and Identify Solutions

Murielle Jassinthe, founder of Black Lantern

When Murielle Jassinthe reached out to the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (BEKH), she was grateful she’d found an organization willing to work together to have much needed conversations around the opportunities and challenges of being a Black entrepreneur in Canada’s northern region.

“We began regular meetings to talk about the needs, to talk about the realities of black business, really just creating possibilities together,” Murielle says.

Murielle is the founder of Black Lantern, a consulting practice focused on supporting artists and cultural organizations, helping them work more sustainably by introducing strategic planning as part of their workflow, so they can produce their artwork in a way that still feels authentic. Her work also extends to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), training everyone from students to lawyers, so they're better equipped on social issues like justice and human rights, empowering lawyers as they defend their clients.

“Everything is pretty much into the defense of marginalized and racialized communities, even if my clients are not always from this community,” Murielle says. In the wake of George Floyd’s death in May 2020, she became the co-founder of a Black Lives Matter faction in Nunavut. At the time, they were making requests of the different levels of government, pushing back against anti-Black racism and working with them to bring about change. This work combined her passions for arts and activism, which is what she continues to do through Black Lantern. As a Black entrepreneur in the northern region, it hasn’t always been easy but the work has been no less rewarding.

“So, the opportunities are that there's a lot of work because it’s very remote, so there's not that many people,” she says. “It's still possible to develop a business and to have a lot of contracts.” Nevertheless, there are unique challenges associated with remote living.

The BEKH’s work around community engagement has been far reaching and, as was the case with Murielle and Black entrepreneurs like her in Canada’s remote northern region, was effective at uniting and uncovering the needs of some business owners within the ecosystem. Being able to have an open and honest conversation about those challenges was one of the reasons why the meetings were fruitful, helping to bring the group together for conversations around solutions. Among those conversations was the need for more funding, specifically for Black entrepreneurs in the north.

“People are not aware of the challenges in the north, everything is way more expensive. The cost of living is expensive, the food, whatever you need to bring over there will cost more.” Murielle says BEKH’s support of conferences and roundtable discussions for Black entrepreneurs was a source of validation for her and others like her: these conversations are important and needed to be had.

“It's super supportive just having other people telling you, you know what, you're [a] visionary, we really need to hear more from you.”