It”™s one thing to love Bridgeport. It”™s another to do something about improving its underserved and underrepresented communities.
“This is about not being given a seat at the table,” said Natalie Pryce. “Or people just wanting their table to look diverse, but not giving you any real power.”
“This” is Led By Us (LBU) & Associates, a consulting firm founded by Pryce and Kelvin Ayala in 2018. Its mission is to empower community stakeholders with the tools, resources and confidence to excel as entrepreneurs, investors and property owners.
“I”™ve always been an entrepreneur at heart,” Pryce, who also runs her own Pryceless Consulting firm, told the Business Journal. “I knew from the age of 17 that I wanted to be an entrepreneur ”” I just didn”™t know what direction I”™d take.”
Upon being named one of the Business Journal”™s “40 Under Forty” in 2017, Pryce said, “I was very proud of myself ”” but I still didn”™t feel like I was where I wanted to be.”
By that time, she said, she”™d become more aware of the various roadblocks that can stand in the way of small businesses ”” particularly minority-owned ones ”” and the need to “level them up” with the rest of the community.
“I”™d been an entrepreneur for 10 years but had only realized later the racism that is systemic in our society,” she said.
Part of that disconnect, she said, comes from the fact that her father was born in England and her mother in Jamaica. “I think I was raised in a different way” than many of her contemporaries in Norwalk, where she grew up, she said.
Pryce first moved to Bridgeport “because the rent was cheap,” she laughed. “I am very much a community person, so any community I land in gets all of me ”” and Bridgeport happened to be that community.”
Her parents said that she could accomplish just as much in Norwalk, “but I wasn”™t so sure about that. Bridgeport allowed me to experiment more, to establish my brand and to create the tables for others to sit at.”
Pryce, Ayala and three other business owners and consultants created I Luv Bridgeport (stylized as “I ♥ BPT”), a community development agency in 2013, which took over management of the city”™s Downtown Thursday concert series and other arts events designed to bring outsiders into Bridgeport.
Eventually, she said, “We noticed that a lot of the vendors and small-business owners involved looked like us.” That led to the decision to turn the group”™s focus inward to the city itself.
Establishing the Collab Exchange, a professional development space for retailers to learn how to grow their business and eventually establish their own storefronts, eventually led to the formation of LBU.
In addition to the Collab Exchange, which now also features a coworking space, the organization offers community development initiative program S.E.A.T. (Skill, Educate, Act, & Transform); real estate development (its next boot camp is tentatively scheduled for the spring in Waterbury); and manages Workshop in Business Opportunities (WIBO)”™s Bridgeport chapter.
There is also Project Main Street, which focuses on creating and supporting entrepreneurship in Bridgeport. Participants go through a 90-day, goal-setting challenge, during which they are partnered with an accountability coach with whom they take intentional action toward the stated goal within that 90-day time period. “It”™s another good way for people to determine whatever bucket they fit,” Pryce said.
Practically by definition, LBU works with the city of Bridgeport to accomplish some of its aims. “Would I like our relationship to be better? Of course,” Pryce said. “Do we want to be at the table more? Yes.
“I would love to ultimately see some of our talent in that building,” she added. “That”™s what”™s important to me, and to all of us.”
