Former Cincinnati City Council member Yvette Simpson has been elected board chair of Cincinnati startup accelerator Mortar as the organization works to expand beyond the Queen City.
Simpson is an attorney and director of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging at Ulmer & Berne. She formerly served as a political commentator for ABC News and chief executive officer for the political action committee Democracy For America.
Simpson served on Mortar’s board for a year prior to her election as board chair at the end of August. She was also on the judging panel for Mortar’s first class of entrepreneurs.
Founded in 2014, Mortar aims to help nontraditional or underserved entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed with place-based programming. It has become a mainstay in Cincinnati’s startup ecosystem, earning myriad state, federal and private foundation grants and empowering business owners with the skills and knowledge needed to survive, create generational wealth and build the local economy.
The nonprofit’s 15-week entrepreneurship academy is followed by continued mentorship and partnership offerings, including legal support, business consulting, capital access, marketing assistance and site scouting. There is currently a wait list to get into the Cincinnati program.
“We are creating a pipeline of young professionals and not-so-young professionals who want to take a stab at entrepreneurship,” Simpson said.
Mortar boasts 382 graduates across 34 cohorts in its first nine years. Going into year number 10, even bigger things are ahead, according to Simpson.
“I don’t think people expected Mortar was going to go very far,” she said. “The leadership of (Mortar CEO Allen Woods) and the other co-founders, they’ve really seen amazing growth, and the organization is doing well financially. Now it’s about taking us to that next level.”
Mortar’s expansion efforts take center stage in that regard. The nonprofit has expanded services or partnered with organizations in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; Milwaukee; Seattle; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and, most recently, Galveston, Texas.
Mortar is also in the midst of a capital campaign to complete the build out of a new headquarters, where Simpson said the nonprofit will have room to host pop-up concepts and, crucially, applicants from potential expansion cities.
“The expansion program is really a big thing that will help put Mortar on the map, not just in Cincinnati, but nationally,” Simpson said. “The idea is to standardize the process so other cities can pick up the Mortar mantle and start up an organization.”
Woods traveled to Galveston to sign the expansion agreement there on June 19, 2023, the Juneteenth holiday that commemorates the same day in 1865 when word of the Emancipation Proclamation reached Galveston.
Some expansion cities have elected to take on the full Mortar program while other have chosen just to adopt the model with Mortar’s assistance, according to Simpson. But increasingly applicants are wanting what she described as “the full package,” where Mortar goes in and builds the program in tandem with the local organizers.
Several more cities have applied and are on a waiting list. The goal is to expand to 15 more cities in the next five years.
“That will be as important as anything we do in Cincinnati,” Simpson said.