In 2020, Michael R. Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies launched the Greenwood Initiative to help increase generational wealth for Black Americans and to address systemic inequities by making strategic investments across the United States. The Greenwood Initiative’s inaugural investment was funding totaling $100 million to America’s four historically Black medical schools to help increase the number of Black doctors. Within the past six months, Greenwood has made additional investments to create more pathways for students from HBCUs to go into STEM fields and to support the four historically Black medical schools’ mobile unit COVID-19 vaccination outreach in their communities.

“We greatly support efforts to increase awareness of how HBCUs impact the U.S. economy and improve our nation’s ability to compete globally. More than 100 public and private HBCUs with 250,000 students have produced stunning results, even though they are often under-resourced and little-known outside their local communities and the regions of the Sunbelt where they are clustered. At UNCF, we say that HBCUs punch above their weight,” explained Dr. Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO, UNCF. “Diversity and more voices at the table makes us stronger. UNCF’s mission is premised on ensuring the opening of more doors of opportunity for students of color. I’m happy to see that we and Bloomberg Live can work together to improve the outcomes of HBCUs and their students through this event. Black students and communities constantly strive to find success, and this event will help us broaden their ability to achieve that. For 77 years, UNCF has worked with our HBCUs, raised $5 billion to support them and their students and helped more than 500,000 students earn college degrees. Every day, we reaffirm the truth and wisdom of the words that ground all that we do: ‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but a wonderful thing to invest in.’^®”