For Ed Mitzen And Business For Good, Accessibility Means Investing In Building More Equitable Communities

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Ed Mitzen over videoconference to have a conversation about the company he co-founded in Business For Good. The organization gets straight to the point on its website, saying in part the power of business can work to “shatter barriers to equity” and “opportunity opens the door to prosperity.” As to its mission, Business For Good says it “invests in people to build better businesses, stronger communities, and a more equitable world,” adding that they’re “committed to the health and well-being and future of our local communities, and the unique people who define them.”

Mitzen explained he and his wife, who are based in New York’s capital city of Albany, got inspiration for starting the foundation after finding themselves “in a financial position that we only ever dreamed of” following the sale of a portion of another company called Fingerprint. A goal of the couple was to give back in some way, as philanthropy has been a big part of their lives for many years. Mitzen said they saw an opportunity to combine their financial privilege with their entrepreneurial acumen in an effort to “try to address that wealth gap in America and help aspiring entrepreneurs, primarily people of color, [and] give them the support they just didn’t have access to and help them to get up the income curve.” In a broad scope, Mitzen told me he and his wife became frustrated at what he termed the “disparity among household net worth between Blacks and Hispanics, compared to white households.” The disproportion is dramatic, with Mitzen adding the median net worth in Black households is under $25,000, while Hispanic households are better at $40,000. Both pale in comparison to white households, where the number sits exponentially better at $170,000.

In a nutshell, Mitzen and his wife recognized their position of privilege and wanted to help people get there too. “To be perfectly candid, as we started our foundation in Business For Good, it’s been one of the most rewarding things that we’ve ever done,” he said of the work he does. “Our company is focused on injecting resources directly into the local community and helping the people that need it most. We’re focused on leveling the playing field by trying to identify high potential entrepreneurs and companies that we can assist and grow and give them access to resources they may not have ever had access to.”

For Mitzen, Business For Good is a manifestation of his desire to always find ways to help those in need, whether they be unhoused people or those facing food insecurity or educational inequality. A seminal moment for him, which he said sort of “smacked me upside the head,” was a combination of the onset of the pandemic and George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Racial tensions, he said, were exacerbated by all these factors, including the Trump administration, and he became “acutely aware [of] how the deck is stacked against a lot of these people.”

“One of my frustrations has been that anytime, prior to our work, you would see somebody hired in this area, for a leadership position and they were a person of color, usually for a DEI position,” Mitzen said. “They weren’t getting the jobs as vice presidents, they weren’t getting the jobs that many other folks have that we used to take for granted. We really thought we could make a difference, and what we’re seeing in this pilot program in the Albany region is that it’s working. We’re trying to focus on driving change from the local community out and try to address this inequity as it’s very pervasive all across the country.”

Mitzen’s comments on opportunities for Black and Brown people parallel those in the disability community, and that says nothing for the intersectionality among groups. As a lifelong disabled person, I can attest disabled people often aren’t considered able to do anything of substance by society writ large. There are virtually disabled people, save for Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman, in positions of authority or power. As I said this week, mainstream media coverage of disability matters lags considerably behind that of other areas of social justice reporting. To Mitzen’s point about using Business For Good as a force for good, the disability community faces barriers every second of every day—I know I do—yet the response to much of our collective plights are reduced to feel-good, mushy inspiration porn about how we’ve overcome adversity when, in reality, the truth is we don’t overcome our bodies as much as we constantly adapt to living in a civilization not built for us. If society were empathic all-inclusive, there’d be no need for accessibility.

There’s often talk on social media and on the news about so-called “white privilege.” In a disability context, abled privilege is never spoken of yet is something to be mindful of. Like racism, ableism exists.

When asked how technology plays a role in the work he does, Mitzen told me the rapidity with which technology advances is a huge asset to the work his and his team do to help others. He said the team makes use of software to help guide them on what work needs to be done, where they need to go, establishing connections, and more. There isn’t one specific technology Mitzen prefers or uses more than another. He’s bought several restaurants and outfitted them with tech designed to aid in “inventory management, pricing, reservation systems” and more.

In terms of feedback, Mitzen said the people he helps are “blown away with the amount of progress we’ve made in a relatively short period of time.” He added the work has been long and involved, but that it’s been instrumental in ”building relationships that we didn’t previously have and building up credibility.”

Mitzen continued: “I think the folks we’ve been helping have really been incredible. A lot of these folks don’t have a lot of money, but they’re such a loving community. They’re the first people that will buy a kid a coat who’s cold or feed somebody that is hungry. They see the work that we’re doing is deliberate and intentional, and we’re doing it on purpose publicly to try to inspire other people to think a little bit differently about how we solve some of the problems in our communities.”

Af for Mitzen’s hopes and dreams for the future, he envisions Business For Good partnering with local governments and other non-profits in order to expand their mission across the United States. Mitzen hopes America’s racial reckoning will, along with his organization, will inspire others to join in furthering the work in uplifting marginalized and underrepresented people and make the world a more equitable place.

“We’re trying to give people a handup not a handout, and leveraging our business experiences and providing real solutions into the communities,” Mitzen said of Business For Good’s ethos. “We’re having a ball doing this work. It’s a lot of work, but it’s so much fun [and] so rewarding. I’ve met some amazing people. I’ve been so confident; when we started, I didn’t know if [this was] going to work we were going to fall flat on our face. Entrepreneurship is hard enough with so many businesses failing, and we knew that we were going into communities where the deck was stacked against them to begin with. We’ve been blessed. We’ve had very few failures. What we’re doing is working. Be able to inspire others to get involved in their communities and do things a little bit differently. That’s where I see us taking this thing.”