OUR STORY
Nine Years in the Making.
A MOVEMENT
BCW is a national platform connecting leaders, creators, entrepreneurs, and changemakers to build more equitable futures. For nine years, we've fostered opportunities where education, economic growth, wellness, and community action come together.
150+
POLICY LEADERS + NATIONAL SPEAKERS
2018
FOUNDED
64K+
COMMUNITY MEMBERS ENGAGED
What We Build
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Policy + Advocacy
Creating space for leadership conversations, civic engagement, restorative justice, and systems change.
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Entrepreneurship
Supporting pathways toward ownership, sustainability, visibility, and long-term economic mobility.
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Workforce Development
Connecting communities to education, mentorship, resources, and career exploration opportunities.
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Wellness + Culture
Centering healing, storytelling, creativity, collective care, and cultural experiences.
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Community Access
Expanding public education, restorative support, visibility, and community-centered resources.
THE
ORIGIN
BCW was founded to address the growing gap between emerging opportunities and the communities most impacted by criminalization. What began as conversations among advocates, educators, entrepreneurs, and community leaders evolved into a movement for collective advancement.
Since 2018, BCW has grown into a national platform rooted in Philadelphia. We bring together policymakers, entrepreneurs, students, artists, wellness practitioners, and changemakers. Through education, entrepreneurship, advocacy, wellness, and culture, we create spaces for meaningful collaboration. Our mission is to build pathways for equity, opportunity, leadership, and lasting community impact.
How it all started.
Why This Matters?
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As new opportunities emerged, equitable access to ownership, education, investment, and leadership often lagged.
BCW works to bridge that gap by amplifying Black leadership and creating pathways for lasting economic and community impact. -
BCW is built on an unconference-style model that prioritizes accessibility, collaboration, and participation over traditional gatekeeping, creating space for shared leadership and lived experience.
This ecosystem brings together entrepreneurship, policy, wellness, culture, education, and civic engagement into one interconnected experience where diverse forms of knowledge and leadership can exist in dialogue.
BCW was created to address the inequities that left Black communities excluded from opportunities, leadership, and economic growth despite being most impacted by criminalization.
Today, it serves as a platform that educates, connects, and empowers communities through collaboration, advocacy, and collective advancement.
Why BCW exists?
64K+
COMMUNITY MEMBERS ENGAGED
9 Years
BUILDING
500+
MEDICAL ACCESS REGISTRATIONS
115+
COMMUNITY-ROOTED EXPERTS
6
WORKFORCE + JOB FAIR ACTIVATIONS
510+
EXPUNGEMENTS + RECORD SUPPORT
Built Ecosystems
BCW was intentionally designed to bring multiple parts of the ecosystem into one shared space, creating opportunities for collaboration across industries, lived experiences, leadership spaces, and community voices.
Daily Dose Tour
A multi-city activation series across the East Coast bringing education, wellness, entrepreneurship, and public dialogue directly into communities through accessible, restorative, and community-centered engagement.
Cannabis Opportunities Conference
The flagship convening brings together entrepreneurs, policymakers, educators, creatives, wellness leaders, students, and community members to shape the future of the ecosystem through BCW’s unconference model that fosters shared space across industries, generations, and lived experiences.
Impact + Highlights
For nearly a decade, BCW has built spaces where advocacy, education, entrepreneurship, wellness, culture, storytelling, and community organizing come together to drive collective advancement.
Evolving from a community-driven response to exclusion, it has grown into a national platform rooted in access, collaboration, and unconference-style experiences that connect policy, workforce, wellness, and cultural engagement.
OUR PARTNERS
Building Together.
Over the last nine years, conversations surrounding restorative justice, entrepreneurship, wellness, policy, culture, and economic opportunity have increasingly entered national dialogue.
BCW continues contributing to those conversations through storytelling, organizing, education, advocacy, partnerships, and community-centered programming designed to create impact beyond a single moment or event.
The platform’s continued growth has been supported through collaborations with organizers, educators, entrepreneurs, public leaders, wellness practitioners, advocates, creatives, and mission-aligned partners committed to collective advancement.
NOW YOU KNOW
The next chapter starts here.
Nine years in, the work continues evolving.
What started as a community-driven response to exclusion has grown into a national platform connecting leadership, education, wellness, entrepreneurship, culture, advocacy, and collective action across the country.
What happens next will require all of us.
