For several years Angela Burke, who owns a PR company that specializes in food marketing, had noticed that black people in the food and beverage industry weren’t being represented in media coverage. “I decided to just start telling the stories myself,” she says. She’d followed Alisha Sommer, a freelance writer and photographer, on Instagram and admired her work, so four months ago, she invited the other woman to have coffee and discuss collaborating. “We were completely on the same page,” says Burke.
Sommer notes that when she goes out to eat, she rarely sees a black sommelier or restaurant manager. “How come there’s so few? The talent is there, but what are the barriers? That’s what we were asking in these profiles,” she says. She and Burke also hope that the site will help change that. “One thing we need to think about when it comes to media is that your reality is based upon images. We believe the things we see. When you don’t see yourself in these lists, you think it means that these options are not for you, that this career is not for you,” Sommer says. “It helps give people inspiration to know that there are black men and women who are doing this, and they’re really successful.”
