Tracy Gray, our guest in this special episode, is a Managing Partner at The 22 Fund, Founder at We Are Enough, and Lead Partner at Porfolia Green & Sustainability Fund. She is an innovative and visionary leader with solid international, investment, business strategy, and marketing experience. With over 15 years of demonstrative team and project management success, including a 200% increase in project funding, Tracy is a relationship builder across various industries – from technology to venture capital to entertainment. 

Having an Air Force veteran for a father, Tracy spent the early years of her life in Okinawa, Japan, and lived in different parts of the US before settling in Lompoc, California, near the Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County. Because of this experience, she fell in love with traveling (She has already been to 42 countries!). It is also why Tracy focused on international business. 

Tracy shares her experiences from college and what she did after graduating, how being a B-student landed her a job at NASA, and how she ended up in the Mayor's office, which is how she came up with her strategy with The 22 Fund.

Being an active citizen in Los Angeles, Tracy also tells us the importance of helping and supporting the community we live in, especially disadvantaged people who don't have the same privileges as we do. She also tells us why she pursued an MBA even after having years of unique professional experiences and how she started and founded The 22 Fund. It is the only one of its kind, investing in high potential women and BIPOC-owned tech-based manufacturing companies to increase their international sales (exporting), with a mission of creating the clean, quality jobs of the future in underserved communities. 

Episode Quotes: 

On having the courage to go after what she wanted to study in college

A lot of research shows that when girls don't do well, we quit, and we do something else. And I hate to be a statistic, but I quit Mechanical Engineering and went into where I was really good, Math. And that's how I landed on Applied Math, Mathematical Science as my major because I still loved engineering, and I wanted to be in Aeronautics. There's no Aeronautics at Santa Barbara, so what I did is I kind of created my own degree. And thank God there was a woman in the Math Department, a Black woman, and she let me do this - create this Mathematical Science degree with Aeronautics emphasis.

And that's how I made my decision. And so, if there's someone young trying to figure out their decision in going to school and listening, I would say, don't be afraid to do what you really want and to say what you want. If I hadn't said I wanted to do this and take this chance and create my own major almost, I would have had a whole different life path probably. But whatever gave me not being fearful about asking that was really fortunate. 

On her duty as a citizen

I just am the type of person where if I'm living someplace, I've got to be active, helping, supporting the community I live in. And it doesn't matter if it's my county or my city or my micro-neighborhood; I am going to be a citizen. I feel like all the work I've done around Los Angeles is my duty as a citizen. I don't know another way to exist in the world as a citizen if you don't support where you live and support the people who don't have all the advantages as you do. 

On pursuing an MBA

It's kind of a societal issue for women, especially Black women. I don't want to say we never think we're enough, but we never think we have enough credibility in the eyes of others that we can do the job we want to do. And so, I knew I wanted to start my own fund, but I always thought I needed as much credibility as possible and more education. That's why Black women are the most educated demographic in the country because we get all these degrees because people think we don't know enough or aren’t enough. We know we are, but we got to get it on paper. So, I wanted to get my MBA for that reason. 

On founding her nonprofit, We Are Enough

All these women were coming up to me crying over a finance talk. And that is where I saw, okay, this is a deep trauma, deep work that women need to do around our money and our power around money and our being okay with power. And so, I launched We Are Enough. The only thing we do is educate everyday women on why and how to invest in women in businesses or with a gender lens on the public markets. Because when you grow women's wealth, all those 17 SDG, sustainable development goals that you hear a lot about, the majority of them are positively impacted by women growing their wealth.

On their unique strategy in investing in manufacturing

I knew I wanted a win-win strategy with high impact and high returns. And I wanted something that had multiple impacts. And so, I landed on manufacturing. People didn't understand that the foundation of our economy literally is manufacturing and making things and selling them abroad. So, if you're a manufacturer that exports your products to another country but you're located here, you create jobs faster, you pay higher wages, and you're more likely to have healthcare. On top of that, when you export, you have higher revenues and are more resilient and more successful.

Our strategy of investing in manufacturing to increase their international sales causes our impacts. We call ourselves holistic investors, not impact investors, because we hit multiple positive impacts. It's not siloed with climate change, race, gender, economic development. We hit it all just from this one strategy in investing in manufacturing to increase their export capacity. So, our mission is to create what we call the clean, quality jobs of the future and low and moderate-income communities and increase generational wealth for women and people of color. And that all happens just by our strategy.

Thoughts on Black History Month

You've got to keep highlighting history because people want to try to erase it. And I wonder why they want to erase it. Why are they fearful? Why are they trying to protect kids from the wrongs in the world? So, I'm very informed. You can't help being a Black person and not be informed by our ancestors. It's ancestral trauma, right? It is with us all the time and it's deep. And it informs a lot of what we do. History will repeat itself if you forget what happened and we're in the middle of that right now. 

Another thing about Black History Month is it added LatinX History Month, Asian History Month. It added all that. And it allowed now with all the trauma around race in our country, every race is starting to see, you know, when people come after Black people, they start looking for another place to come after. They come after all of us that do not fit in a particular way they think we should be. And so, when I think about Black History Month and the history of Black people, it's a history of all people in this country, right? This isn't just my history. And it informs a lot of how people of color are treated. And so this year of the race and ethnic months, I feel like we need one month at the end called the multicultural month where we all come together and talk about the power and the beauty of different cultures and what it has built in this country.

Show Links:

• Tracy Gray on LinkedIn
• The 22 Fund
• We Are Enough

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