Hough Entrepreneurship | Cleveland Neighborhood Series (2/3)

Mansfield Frazier

Founder

Chateau Hough

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mansfieldfrazier/

Mansfield Frazier is a native Clevelander and a product of the Cleveland public school system. He left Cleveland in 1969, and for the next 30 years lived all over the United States, pursuing activities that can best be described as checkered at best, an experience he feels greatly shapes his perspectives as a writer and journalist, primarily focused on social justice issues.

Self-taught as a writer, he returned to Cleveland in 1995 and began his career as the associate editor of an urban news magazine, The Downtown Tab. He’s served briefly as the editor of the minority-focused weekly, The Call & Post before moving on to edit CityNews, a startup urban weekly. His writing currently is featured nationally on Newsweek/The Daily Beast, and locally on both CoolCleveland.com and The Cleveland Leader.

He currently serves as the executive director of Neighborhood Solutions, Inc. a non-profit that publishes Reentry Advocate, a national magazine that goes into various prisons, libraries, county jails, halfway houses and prison ministries around the United States.

The organization he heads won a competitive grant in 2010 to establish the country’s first inner-city vineyard, the three-quarter acre Vineyards of Château Hough, located in the community in which he resides.

Mansfield and his wife Brenda enjoy tending their raised bed gardens, which they work diligently to keep their two dogs, Ginger and Zeda from rampaging through.

Maya Melton

Founder

DressedTuKale

Maya Melton was inspired to started DressedTuKale, a Cleveland-based salad company, while on a mission to improve her personal health. The mission of DTK is to provide healthy and delicious food options on the go to people who typically don’t have access to health food. Maya aims to put a whole new spin on the term “Kale Salad.” She is passionate about educating her customers about the positive effects of consuming healthy foods.

Michael Goldberg

Executive Director

CWRU Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgoldberg2/

Michael E. Goldberg is a venture capitalist and Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Department of Design and Innovation at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. Goldberg created the massive open online course, or MOOC, called Beyond Silicon Valley: Growing Entrepreneurship in Transitioning Economies, which has attracted over 135,000 students from 190 countries with subtitles in 16 languages (the most on the Coursera platform). Inc.com named Beyond Silicon Valley one of the top online classes that “will make you smarter and more interesting.” Goldberg spoke about the impact of his MOOC at TEDxHeraklion in Crete and TEDxFulbright in Santa Monica.

Goldberg co-founded an international venture capital fund (Bridge Investment Fund) and also previously worked at America Online and Microsoft.

Goldberg has deep experience teaching entrepreneurship in international markets. He was awarded Fulbright fellowships to teach entrepreneurship in Vietnam and Namibia. He has conducted seminars on behalf of the U.S. Department of State on entrepreneurship in Argentina, Austria, Botswana, Cambodia, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Kosovo, Laos, Macedonia, Morocco, Myanmar, Namibia, the Netherlands, Philippines, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, Tunisia, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

He has appeared as a frequent guest panelist on MSNBC’s “Your Business” and written on international entrepreneurship for CNBC, Entrepreneur.com and The Huffington Post. Goldberg earned a BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, an MA in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. (beyondsiliconvalleybook.com)

Jamel Rahkeera

Founder

Village Family Farms

Village Family Farms, Inc. is a minority-owned urban garden that cultivates produce sold to farmers markets within the neighborhoods of Cleveland. Jamel Rahkeera in 2018 expanded his urban garden operations onto a fourth plot near the intersection of Harkness and Crawford Roads. Village Family Farms sells their produce on-site as well as utilizing the urban farm to train local neighborhood children to plant, germinate, care for and harvest produce. 

Jamel Rahkeera used the grant funds to purchase irrigation & gardening equipment, bee hive equipment, signage, wood for raised beds, gardening tools, storage container/tool shed, fencing, soil, display tables, construction materials, rain barrels, and other items needed for the development of an expanding urban garden. The Gardening for Greenbacks program requires grantees to operate for now less than two years, but Village Family Farms has been farming since 2014.

Jamel Rahkeera is also part of the “Produce Perks” program which doubles the value of SNAP (food stamps) when spent on fruits and vegetables. Previously Jamel Rahkeera hosted, along with the Cleveland Foundation, a Meet-n-Greet focused around urban farming in Cleveland to build a network for food retailers, producers, and communities to increase access to locally grown, healthy food for all Cleveland-ers.

In 2018, Department of Economic Development further supported his urban farming efforts by providing a Gardening for Greenbacks grant up to $5,000 to help the garden increase yields and assist with the mission to increase access to locally grown, health food for neighborhood residents in Hough and other parts of the City. The urban farm continues to operate at this location and Jamel Rahkeera has met all of the Gardening for Greenback’s program requirements. (makeitincleveland.org)