Oscar Pedroso joins other entrepreneurs of color to discuss meaningful ways to address the obstacles minorities face when trying to start, grow and operate their own companies.
September 27, 2022 – Oscar Pedroso, founder and CEO of Thimble.io, an ed-tech company that prepares kids for careers in robotics, coding, machine learning, and other tech-related fields, attended the Entrepreneurs of Color roundtable with the Senate Entrepreneurship Caucus, hosted by the Center for American Entrepreneurship and the Alliance for Entrepreneurial Equity on Tuesday, September 20th in Washington, DC.
Entrepreneurs of color face barriers to capital, investing, and resources to run and grow their ventures.
Joining 20 other founders, Pedroso discussed with policymakers and identified, discussed, and considered meaningful ways to address the obstacles minorities face when trying to start, grow and operate their own companies.
“This was a great opportunity for founders to come together with policymakers on what is needed to make entrepreneurs with color successful,” said Pedroso, who founded Thimble.io in 2017. “Startups are the backbone of the US economy and innovation. Senators need to know first-hand the challenges that founders of colors face.”
The roundtable focused on access to federal funding, childcare for female entrepreneurs, and the availability of programs that support founders as accelerators do. Some of the founders’ proposed solutions included better auditing federal funding programs to see who’s making decisions and more policies to support female founders with young children.
Representing the Senate Entrepreneurship Caucus were Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Jerry Moran (R-KS), and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM). The Sens. were also joined by Don Cravins, Under-Secretary for Minority Business Development at the Department of Commerce.
About Thimble.io:
Founded in 2017, Thimble.io is a company founded on the belief that every student deserves access to modern STEM education regardless of the school they attend. Thimble.io’s in-school comprehensive 4-12 STEM education curriculum is available to school districts nationwide. The project-based STEM curriculum exposes students to robotics, coding, machine learning, and a variety of other tech-related fields to build the future workforce.