The Goldman Sachs Black in Business Programme closed its latest cohort with significant reflections from participants, including Charis J. Dorsey, Esq., founder of The Brand Attorney®, a trademark and business advisory practice serving beauty and wellness brands across global markets. Her account adds to a growing body of evidence illustrating the programme’s impact on entrepreneurial leadership, network formation, and long-term business sustainability.
Goldman Sachs launched the initiative in 2021 as part of its broader One Million Black Women commitment, a multi-billion-dollar investment aimed at addressing opportunity gaps in income, leadership representation, and business growth for Black women in the United States. The firm’s programme outline, available on its Black in Business platform, emphasises intensive capacity-building in financial literacy, operational design, and market strategy. The curriculum is delivered through a combination of virtual instruction, expert-led workshops, and peer accountability structures.
This year’s cohort maintained that structure, bringing together entrepreneurs at varying stages of development in sectors ranging from technology and consulting to beauty, wellness, and professional services. The programme’s design has remained consistent with its initial model: reducing barriers to high-level business education while ensuring participants receive practical tools to strengthen revenue stability, legal compliance, and competitive positioning.
For Dorsey, who built The Brand Attorney® into a niche practice supporting intellectual property protection and business formation for beauty and wellness brands, the programme offered more than technical refinements. She noted that while her primary aim was to sharpen strategic direction, the defining element emerged in the form of a tightly knit growth group. The cohort functioned as a professional support circle, reinforcing discipline, clarifying business goals, and providing a space for rigorous, honest feedback. She described the experience as a reminder of what effective community feels like: consistent, grounded, and structured enough to influence behaviour and decision-making.
Programme facilitators highlighted similar outcomes across the group, citing increased confidence, stronger financial planning, and improved long-term strategy articulation. These results reflect the programme’s broader objective of closing the entrepreneurship gap by equipping Black women with training historically limited to networks with higher capital access.
Dorsey’s reflections echo wider trends documented in earlier cohorts, where participants have reported improved business processes, expanded networks, and measurable shifts in leadership readiness. As the initiative continues to scale under the One Million Black Women investment framework, its outcomes are increasingly recognised as part of a growing infrastructure of support for Black women founders seeking global competitiveness.
The Brand Attorney® now moves into its next phase with renewed clarity and a strengthened strategic outlook — a trajectory shaped not only by curriculum, but by the professional trust network forged inside the programme’s collaborative model.
