Project Overview 

One Million Black Women: Closing the Wealth Gap is a Goldman Sachs initiative investing $10 billion in direct capital and $100 million in philanthropic support over the next decade to help narrow opportunity gaps Black women face across several outcomes including health, housing, education, and access to capital. Grounded in research, the initiative forges partnerships with Black women–led organizations and other groups to address the disproportionate gender and racial biases that Black women have faced for generations and that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Goldman Sachs and the Urban Institute launched the One Million Black Women Research Partnership in 2022. This learning community engages with seven impact pillars―health care, job creation and workforce advancement, education, housing, digital connectivity, financial health, and access to capital―to guide the partnership's collaborative work.

In the partnership’s first year, we invited faculty and researchers from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to develop new products addressing the persistent racial gaps in earnings and wealth that Black women experience. Each scholar selected for cohort I considered the impact of structural factors, including racism, classism, and sexism, on Black women’s earnings or wealth, examining the intersections of these mutually reinforcing systems of disadvantage.

In the partnership’s second year, we invited faculty and researchers from HBCUs, researchers of color at Predominantly White Institutions, and scholars of color at policy and research centers to build a larger learning community of researchers focused on the racial wealth gap for Black women. For more information on cohort II scholars’ proposed research, click here.