RUNWAY Roots: A Rebrand Rooted in Repair, Justice, and Power
What looks like a shift above ground is actually the result of years of tending below the surface—nourished by where we’ve been and reaching toward new possibilities. We are so proud to introduce RUNWAY Roots and our next season of growth.
RUNWAY was born from a seed planted in 2016 by Jessica Norwood, fed by vision, courage, and the unwavering belief that Black entrepreneurs deserve more than bootstrap myths and extractive finance. We were clear on the problem that Black founders had the ideas, the brilliance, and the drive, but not the capital. Not because they weren’t ready, but because the systems weren’t. So we asked:
What if friends-and-family funding was no longer a privilege of proximity to whiteness? What if trust—not credit scores—was our foundation?
We answered many of our own questions by building the kind of reparative economic system we wanted to see in the world. In our earliest days, we collaborated with credit unions to pilot trust-based loans for Black entrepreneurs in Oakland. We expanded to Boston and brought community-led underwriting to institutional banks. During the pandemic, we launched a Universal Basic Income program for Black founders and helped entrepreneurs renegotiate their loan terms.
That same spirit of care, accountability, and community vision has now led us here to RUNWAY Roots.
This moment calls for a name that reflects the way we move. Not just forward, but downward and outward—like roots anchoring into the ground, like networks building strength through connection. Because the deeper we root, the more we can weather.
We are living through the collapse of institutions, narratives, and the lies that the free market is actually free. As the systems around us fray, we are rooting deeper into our mission and becoming more unshakable. Transitioning to RUNWAY Roots is a return to our core, to our people, and to the kind of economy that remembers how to care.
But we’ve always known this work is not just about moving capital. It’s about building collective power and transforming the culture of finance. It’s about unlearning the stories we’ve been taught about risk, about who’s worthy of investment, and about what success, wealth, and power looks like.
Our Evolved Strategy: Rooted and Ready
With this rebrand, we’re more aligned than ever around three strategic commitments:
Reparative Capital: A Tool for Healing
Reparative capital is a financial strategy rooted in repair. It’s an answer to generations of exclusion and a commitment to move money in ways that heal—not harm. We believe that capital should hold people through the realities of life, and as a result, we design financial products and funds that do more than distribute capital—they restore dignity and recognize humanity.
Through funds like The ROOTED Fund, now scaling nationally to $50 million, we show what it means to invest in entrepreneurs serving Black communities and the ecosystems that help them thrive.
Power Building: Strategic Interdependence
Entrepreneurs drive the vision. Communities transform ideas into collective action. Infrastructures make the work possible. Movements clear the path. We support them all. Building collective power means investing in community partners who understand the cultural and emotional terrain of entrepreneurship. It means collaborating with organizers pushing policies that protect BIPOC-owned businesses. It means calling on funders who are ready to shift not just their portfolios—but their postures.
We are part of a mycelial network of resistance and regeneration, because real transformation requires alignment and interdependence. That’s how we build collective power.
Shifting the Culture of Finance: Changing the Story, Changing the System
Finance is not all numbers and figures. It’s a narrative—stories we share about who deserves to get funded, who gets left out, who defines the terms. RUNWAY Roots is shifting the narrative and transforming the cultural conditions that shape capital. We’re replacing outdated myths of meritocracy and scarcity with lived truths rooted in care, community, and abundance. We’re training funders to recognize the harm of extraction. We’re equipping entrepreneurs to name what they need and why it matters. We’re publishing data that refuses to flatten our people into statistics.
The truth is: the financial system was never broken. It was built like this—intentionally. But culture can be composted. Tired myths can be turned into fertile ground. And from there, new beliefs can grow.
This is what our rebrand stands for.
We’re still the same RUNWAY you’ve walked alongside. But we’ve expanded. We’ve matured. We’ve stretched our limbs toward the sun and planted ourselves even more firmly in the soil of Black liberation.
We are now RUNWAY Roots.
A financial innovation group.
A movement builder.
The Home of Reparative Capital.
