Women Who Influence founder Gabrieline Reece brings Black women business owners face-to-face with New York City’s economic development leaders at the 2026 Pink Apple Awards on October 22.
The Power Seat, the signature leadership conversation created by Women Who Influence, arrives at Brooklyn Borough Hall on Thursday, October 22, 2026, placing the women behind New York’s small businesses in the same room as the leaders who help shape capital, contracting and economic opportunity across the city.
Presented in partnership with the Office of Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, the program anchors the 2026 Pink Apple Awards under this year’s theme, How Small Businesses Are Moving New York Forward. Women Who Influence Founder and Executive Director Gabrieline Reece will welcome guests, Reynoso will open the ceremony, and Jeanny Pak, Chief Operating Officer of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, will deliver special remarks.
At the center of the day are three founders whose businesses carry the culture, flavor, and history of the communities they serve: Jessica Spaulding of Harlem Chocolate Factory, Ka-wana Jefferson of Sweet Catch BK and Lost Borough Ice Cream, and JaQuitta Robinson of Pretty in Pink Brow and Beauty Bar.
The Conversation That Comes After the Grand Opening
Opening a business earns applause. Keeping it open is the work that rarely makes the announcement, and that is the conversation Women Who Influence is bringing to Borough Hall.
The numbers on New York’s commercial corridors help explain the urgency. According to the New York City Comptroller’s storefront vacancy analysis, the citywide storefront vacancy rate stood at 11.0% as of April 15, 2026, while the Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill reached 19.5%. Behind those figures are women whose businesses support families, create jobs, and help anchor entire blocks.
Women Who Influence has heard the same concern directly from the entrepreneurs it serves. Through the organization’s outreach, 347 entrepreneurs responded to a survey, and 68% said they were unsure how to sustain or grow their businesses after launch.
The Power Seat is designed to meet that moment. The discussion will examine the impact small businesses are making across New York City and what owners need to build sustainable, growing companies, including access to capital, contracting opportunities for minority- and women-owned business enterprises (M/WBEs), business resources, institutional relationships, visibility, neighborhood investment, and stronger collaboration between the public sector, private companies, and communities.
Jessica Spaulding Tells Harlem’s Story Through Chocolate
Jessica Spaulding, Founder and CEO of Harlem Chocolate Factory, built her company out of one of the hardest seasons of her life. After being laid off from her career in marketing, she was raising a two-year-old and a five-month-old while facing serious financial strain and sleeping on an air mattress. She sought public assistance and was denied.
What she did have was a lifelong command of her craft. Chocolate had been part of Spaulding’s life since childhood, and she tempered her first batch at 10 years old. She also saw a clear gap in the market. Chocolates from around the world told stories about their cultures, yet she rarely saw Black culture or Harlem reflected in the same way.
Spaulding turned that insight into a company. She secured a $3,000 loan from a community development financial institution and won $15,000 through the New York Public Library’s StartUP! Business Plan Competition before launching Harlem Chocolate Factory in 2015. Today, the brand uses premium chocolate to tell stories rooted in Black culture and Harlem, and Spaulding has built national recognition while continuing to manage the financing, operating, and growth pressures that come with running a neighborhood business.
Ka-wana Jefferson Is Building an Inheritance
Ka-wana Jefferson, Owner of Sweet Catch BK and Co-Owner of Lost Borough Ice Cream, began her professional life as a school psychologist while working in hospitality on the side as a waitress, bartender, and manager. Years of helping build other people’s businesses sharpened her desire for something of her own, something she could create, grow, and one day leave to her children.
She opened her first brick-and-mortar business, Sweet Brooklyn, while nine months pregnant, welcoming a son and a new business at nearly the same time. Her entrepreneurial path grew into Sweet Catch BK, a Southern-style seafood restaurant that celebrates Black culinary culture and her family’s Southern and Gullah Geechee roots, as well as Lost Borough Ice Cream.
Jefferson knows the side of ownership that customers rarely see, from staffing pressures and rising operating costs to financing challenges and the moments when an owner reinvests her own resources to keep the business moving. For her, every one of those decisions connects back to family, culture, community and the legacy she is building for her children.
JaQuitta Robinson Used Her Medical Knowledge & Beauty Expertise To Break Barriers
JaQuitta Robinson, founder of Pretty in Pink Brow and Beauty Bar, entered the beauty industry more than 20 years ago while navigating life as a teenage mother. Alongside that work, she built a professional healthcare career as a National Board Certified Cardiopulmonary Practitioner, and she eventually brought her medical knowledge and beauty expertise together through permanent makeup and paramedical tattooing.
As a Black LGBTQ+ woman and mother, Robinson has spoken about building a business at the intersection of multiple identities while pursuing the same capital and opportunities other founders need to grow. She took Pretty in Pink from a salon suite to a six-figure storefront business. When grant applications fell through and traditional financing did not provide the capital she needed, she turned to high-interest private financing to keep moving forward.
Today, Pretty in Pink creates employment opportunities for women, and Robinson works as a Master PMU Artist, trainer and paramedical tattoo artist. Her work includes 3D areola tattooing for breast cancer survivors, a service that connects the healthcare career she built with the beauty business she created. As she prepares for her next stage of expansion, her journey speaks directly to the question at the heart of The Power Seat about how much harder founders must work when traditional doors to capital stay closed.
Gabrieline Reece Built the Room She Once Needed
Gabrieline Reece was born in Liberia and moved to Minnesota with her family at three years old. Growing up in Minneapolis, she showed her independence early. As a teenager, she worked two jobs, at McDonald’s and a water park, and saved nearly $20,000 because she had decided she was moving to California. By the time she told her parents, she had already secured a job, an apartment, and roommates.
Reece went on to earn her degrees and build a career across public relations, marketing and events. Her corporate experience also included being overlooked for advancement while being handed greater responsibility, navigating microaggressions and carrying the pressure many Black women feel to carefully manage how they show up at work. She eventually stepped away from a definition of success that no longer fit her and launched her own agency.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, Reece saw that women doing meaningful work in business and in their communities were still being overlooked. At 28, with no filmmaking experience, she invested $6,000 of her own money, reached out to women she had never met, assembled a production team and created Shot of Influence, an hour-long documentary centered on women entrepreneurs, executives and community leaders. Filming wrapped in roughly six weeks.
In 2021, that instinct became Women Who Influence, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that equips underrepresented business owners with education, relationships, resources, and access to capital and institutional opportunities. Under Reece’s leadership, the organization has recorded more than 1,800 program attendances since its founding, connecting entrepreneurs with corporations, financial institutions, government and economic development leaders.
“This year’s celebration recognizes the women and small-business owners moving New York forward every day,” said Reece. “I founded Women Who Influence because recognition should lead to access. By bringing entrepreneurs’ voices and experiences into Brooklyn Borough Hall, we are building connections that can help businesses grow, strengthen communities, and shape the future of our city.”
A Table Set With Decision Makers
Monique Glover, Founder and Creative Director of ZYEM NYC and a contributing journalist and media correspondent, will host the day. Jodi Brockington, Founder and CEO of NIARA Consulting, will moderate The Power Seat.
Joining Spaulding, Jefferson and Robinson in conversation are Delia Awusi, who serves as New York City’s Mom-and-Pop Czar, and Kitty Chan, Deputy Commissioner at the NYC Department of Small Business Services.
Following the conversation, the 2026 Pink Apple Awards ceremony will present the Crystal Apple Awards to four honorees. Pamela Morgan, Co-Chair of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, New York, will receive the Crystal Apple Award for Global Leadership. Kanchana Suggu, Senior Vice President and Chief Impact Officer of United Way of New York City, will receive the Crystal Apple Award for Community Impact. Dr. Erica Ford, Founder and CEO of LIFE Camp, will receive the Crystal Apple Legacy Award, and Cynthia Horner, CEO and Publisher of Right On! Magazine, will receive the Crystal Apple Award for Cultural Impact.
Participating organizations include the NYC Department of Small Business Services, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, United Way of New York City, the Bronx Economic Development Corporation, the Queens Chamber of Commerce and the Office of Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. The day closes with the Leadership Networking Reception, sponsored by PNC Bank.
Mark the Date
The Power Seat at the 2026 Pink Apple Awards takes place Thursday, October 22, 2026, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201. Guest arrival begins at 10:00 a.m., The Power Seat conversation starts at 11:15 a.m.; the Pink Apple Awards ceremony follows at noon, and the Leadership Networking Reception concludes at 3:30 p.m.
