Advocate Aurora Well being’s Milwaukee headquarters in Walker’s Level.

In late 2019, Advocate Aurora Health introduced a $50 million commitment over five years to deal with disparities that have an effect on well being outcomes in Wisconsin and Illinois communities.

Whereas the Downers Grove, Illinois- and Milwaukee-based well being care system is within the enterprise of addressing sufferers’ bodily and psychological well being wants, a part of its funding technique lately has centered on supporting small companies, recognizing the correlation between revenue and well being outcomes in a neighborhood.

Advocate Aurora discovered a companion in Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corp., which is within the enterprise of supporting entrepreneurs from under-represented teams and under-resourced communities.

As a part of its $50 million initiative, the well being system executed a $1 million mortgage settlement with the neighborhood improvement monetary establishment, which in flip has distributed funds to help two Milwaukee companies’ development plans: The Pink Bakery, the maker of allergen-free baking mixes, and Milwaukee Instances, a Black-owned weekly neighborhood newspaper.

Vincent Lyles, vice chairman of neighborhood relations for Advocate Aurora, stated WWBIC president Wendy Baumann was the well being system’s first name when it started planning its distribution of funds.

“Their strategy is a really holistic strategy,” Lyles stated. “It’s not nearly giving any person some cash; it’s additionally about making the enterprise robust, which in flip can facilitate development.”

Lyles famous WWBIC was additionally positioned to deploy funds shortly.

“The necessity is actual,” he stated. “The (COVID-19) pandemic has proven all of us how the world might be flipped upside-down. The truth that we’re capable of raise up a few of these companies that have been struggling all through the pandemic that now have a firmer footing is all about well being outcomes as effectively. All of the analysis talks about (how) a wealthier neighborhood is a more healthy neighborhood.”

Advocate Aurora’s funding additionally represented a brand new alternative for WWBIC, Baumann stated. Historically, the group has borrowed from federal and native authorities entities, monetary establishments, foundations and accredited particular person buyers.

“Why I used to be keen on Aurora … is the company piece coming in and saying, ‘We, too, really feel we will spend money on our communities.’ In Aurora’s case, it’s with a really robust mission associated to well being and wellness of a neighborhood, and that being outlined as financial well being and wellness. It’s leading edge and strategic,” she stated, noting Advocate Aurora and Spectrum, each million-dollar buyers, are the primary company companions to make loan-capital investments by means of WWBIC.

The aim is for Advocate Aurora to deploy and recoup its funding by 2025, at which level it can redeploy these {dollars}, Lyles stated.

“We see this as a cycle of alternative,” he stated.

The Pink Bakery opens allergen-free facility 

Nubian Simmons, proprietor of The Pink Bakery in Milwaukee

The Pink Bakery’s mission of offering desserts to individuals with critical meals allergy symptoms aligns with Advocate Aurora’s focus space of addressing meals insecurity, stated Lyles.

The WWBIC mortgage allowed proprietor Nubian Simmons to buy and convert a former Miller Valley workplace area right into a devoted manufacturing facility to provide her line of baking mixes, which use licensed natural, non-GMO, gluten-free and Honest Commerce components.

Simmons, who grew up in Milwaukee and has critical meals allergy symptoms, began experimenting with recipes a decade in the past in hopes of constructing allergy-free brownies, muffins and cookies that may style pretty much as good as common baked items. The Pink Bakery formally included in 2014.

“It took me about 5 years to get my mixes the place I felt like I’d let another person style it,” she stated.

Simmons moved to Memphis in 2016 to work at St. Jude Youngsters’s Hospital and continued constructing out the baking enterprise. When she was per week away from closing on a land buy to construct a producing facility, the outcomes from an environmental check revealed the land was poisonous. Simmons took it as an indication and determined to return to Milwaukee.

In fall 2020, she discovered the constructing in Miller Valley she now occupies. In early 2021, Simmons, who had bootstrapped the corporate, accomplished the mortgage paperwork with WWBIC, her first enterprise mortgage.

“The WWBIC mortgage got here proper on the time that I wanted it,” she stated.

Renovations on the area have been accomplished in October; the power operates freed from the 14 high allergens.

Simmons stated she deliberately prioritized minority companies on the challenge, directing about two-thirds of her funds to minority contractors.

“There have been so many Black companies that closed due to COVID. I checked out this as a chance: If I’ve these {dollars}, let me see what number of I can attempt to assist preserve in enterprise,” she stated.

She now plans to rent for about 4 positions, together with manufacturing employees. Simmons stated the enterprise is finalizing an undisclosed deal that can enable it to increase.

The bakery does most of its gross sales on-line, however its mixes are additionally obtainable for buy at Plantonic Cafe in Hartford and Wellness For Life Clinic in West Bend. Sooner or later, Simmons envisions touchdown a contact to promote her baked items with an airline or at a sports activities stadium.

“If somebody have been to put one thing like this in any of these locations, I really feel like extra of us would come out as a result of we might really feel like these group cared sufficient about us to attempt to embody us,” she stated.

New possession at Milwaukee Instances

Milwaukee Instances’ workplace at 1936 N. King Drive.

As certainly one of three Black newspapers within the metropolis, The Milwaukee Times is ready to attain audiences, notably these dwelling on the north facet, with vital info and sources that different information retailers can’t, stated Lyles of Advocate Aurora.

“We’ve spent the final nearly two years now speaking to individuals about COVID, and we’d like autos like The Milwaukee Instances to have the ability to share that message,” he stated. “… The truth that this paper is ready to talk these messages in methods and attain individuals the place they’re, we thought, was actually vital.”

Proprietor Rev. Harold Turner used the WWBIC mortgage to buy the 40-year-old newspaper from former proprietor Lynda Jackson Conyers, with plans to develop its print store.

Along with publishing a weekly neighborhood paper, the Instances additionally gives printing companies to small companies within the neighborhood, with merchandise together with obituaries, church bulletins, enterprise playing cards and invoices. In its early days, the Milwaukee Instances primarily revealed church-related information and it went on to develop its scope of protection.

Turner, who labored for 50 years as a pastor and has labored in insurance coverage, brings many present relationships with space funeral houses to the enterprise. He stated he plans to make investments in gear to increase the printing enterprise and probably rent one or two extra staff. The enterprise at present has 4 staff.

“We’ll transcend the peculiar and repeatedly make it No. 1,” Turner stated of the newspaper. “… We’ll convey it to life.”



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