Introduction and the Origin of Resilient Ventures
Taryell Simmons: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of Rise Urban Nation. It is your host, Taryell Simmons, and I am here today with two amazing gentlemen, Thomas Droege and Dr. Keith Daniel. In this great work that we do, you need authentic allies. Thomas is our brother from another mother, right alongside us in the fight for equity and amplifying the work of Black entrepreneurs everywhere. We are going to dive right into their stories and the impactful work they are doing at Resilient Ventures. Let us start right there with the name. How did you come up with Resilient Ventures?
Thomas Droege: About eight years ago, I was participating in an intensive racial equity training course where we were examining history and racial equity over several days. Midway through, the facilitator asked all seventy people in the room to offer one word that defined their identity. Several African American participants stood up and chose the word resilient. I had never heard that word used as an identity before. It caused me to reflect deeply on its biological definition: the capacity of an organism to withstand constant environmental stress and hardship and still flourish, much like life on a coral reef constantly pounded by waves. In our racial equity framework, we describe white privilege as a tailwind, whereas African Americans continually navigate a fierce headwind. Resilient felt like the right word—one rooted in genuine community experience that honors that endurance while signaling that we are building a path toward flourishing.
Taryell Simmons: I love that definition. Now Keith, tell us about your background and how your personal journey brought you into this space.
Dr. Keith Daniel: Thank you for having us on the show, Taryell. Growing up in Washington, D.C., my parents were part of that generation that migrated north from the South for civil service careers. My mother served as an Equal Employment Opportunity director for thirty years across the Department of the Navy and Agriculture, and my father was a drafting engineer for a defense contractor. They were dedicated civil servants who wanted something greater for me. I became one of the first in my family to attend a predominantly white institution when I went to Duke University. Experiencing that expansive network after attending a predominantly Black high school and church opened up the world to me. I worked full-time in higher education and human resources at Duke, earned my graduate degree at North Carolina State University, and later felt called to attend Duke Divinity School. My life has been centered around theology, purpose, and education—asking how we fulfill something higher than ourselves in this world.
Building Relationships on Trust Rather Than Transactions
Taryell Simmons: Thomas, stepping into Black spaces and inviting leaders to join you takes courage. How did the two of you first connect?
Thomas Droege: In the 1990s, I was involved in Promise Keepers with our mutual friend Ernest Smith, visiting Black churches and engaging in conversations about reconciliation. Fast forward years later, I had organized a four-week racial equity cohort for twenty pastors at a megachurch. By the fourth week, I was scheduled to teach on theology, but I only had a single scripture verse prepared. I was in dire straits. Ernest and his wife Cameron had previously recommended Keith to me, and as providence would have it, Keith was speaking at the church on racial reconciliation. I approached Keith afterward and asked if he would help me teach the theological dimension. His response startled me. He said he would help only on the condition that our connection not be transactional—that we build an authentic relationship first. Then he added candidly that he did not know me well enough to trust me. Having worked across the color line for years, no one had ever spoken that truth to me so plainly. It gave me pause and made me realize what was truly at stake.
Taryell Simmons: That foundation of communication and trust is vital for any transformational relationship. Keith, what made that non-transactional boundary so important for you?
Dr. Keith Daniel: In these spaces, African Americans are accustomed to people reaching out when they need something utilitarian—a quick connection, a diversity checkbox, or someone to validate their program. I was not interested in being a transaction. If we were going to engage in the serious work of racial equity, we had to be willing to do the hard personal work of relationship building first. Over time, as Tom and I spent countless hours together, we developed genuine trust, shared meals, challenged one another, and aligned our values. You cannot skip that relational groundwork if you intend to steward capital together and confront systemic injustice.
Moving Past Superficial Reconciliation to Economic Justice
Taryell Simmons: How did faith and theology shape your motivation to transition from community dialogues into venture capital?
Thomas Droege: During the 1990s, the evangelical church was vocal about racial reconciliation, but over time that concern dissipated into men’s retreats and superficial fellowship that avoided hard justice conversations. Around 2015, churches began mentioning race again, but it was cloaked in the idea that if we simply love Jesus and call for unity, everything will resolve itself without examining history. That rubbed me the wrong way. Racism is not a biblical concept that you can resolve with a single proof text. When you study what happened following the Thirteenth Amendment, you see four hundred years of affirmative action for white Americans—the Homestead Act, FHA housing loans, the GI Bill—while African Americans were systematically excluded and disinherited. Poverty in Black neighborhoods is not a moral failure; it is the structural result of withholding flourishing. I realized that true reconciliation requires moving capital across the racial wealth gap.
Dr. Keith Daniel: Capitalism pushes a rags-to-riches narrative that says if you simply work hard, you will accumulate wealth. In church, people can fall into the prosperity gospel, believing that faith alone will make them millionaires. But you walk out of church and see entire neighborhoods trapped in economic despair. We cannot satisfy ourselves with charity. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned that philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the economic injustices that make philanthropy necessary. Here in Durham, we have a storied legacy with John Merrick founding North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company alongside early white patrons like Washington Duke. Yet decades later, highway construction and urban renewal wiped out the historic Black Wall Street in Hayti, fracturing community wealth. We cannot simply mourn that history. Wealthy white individuals must actively take steps to redirect capital into Black founders and build lasting economic power.
Launching Resilient Ventures and Confronting Bias
Taryell Simmons: How did you translate that conviction into launching an actual venture capital fund? What did that process look like?
Thomas Droege: People often forget that a venture fund is itself a startup. Having run Droege Computing Services since 1985 and contributed to North Carolina’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, I understand how startups function. When Keith and I decided to pursue this, I committed a million dollars of my personal wealth over five years—about twenty-five percent of my assets. Keith encouraged me by calling me an abolitionist liberating dollars. When we began pitching angel investors to raise our fund, many well-meaning people advised us to form a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. But we firmly rejected that. This is not charity. These are viable, high-growth companies that simply lack access to capital, and our thesis is that we are going to generate competitive financial returns. In our pitch deck, we included a slide detailing eight historical facts: the broken promise of forty acres and a mule, sharecropping, mass incarceration, redlining, and exclusion from the GI Bill. We were sitting in boardrooms educating wealthy white angel investors who had never attended a racial equity seminar in their lives.
Taryell Simmons: What kind of reactions did you receive from those investors?
Thomas Droege: We had some astonishing conversations. One angel investor insisted to us that venture capitalists could not possibly be racist because their hunger for financial returns would override any personal prejudice. He believed that if a VC saw a promising deal from a Black entrepreneur, the lure of profit would instantly erase all bias. That demonstrated just how blind the industry can be to its own structural patterns.
Dr. Keith Daniel: Raising capital requires looking people in the eye and convincing them you can execute your thesis. Neither Tom nor I had a prior institutional venture track record. Furthermore, as an African American professional, the downside risks of failure are immensely higher. When someone asked me why I still maintained higher education consulting contracts on the side, I had to explain that I cannot afford to abandon every safety net. If an initiative fails for a Black founder, the consequences to your family and reputation can be devastating. Having white allies who recognize that reality, who show up consistently without needing constant applause, and who ask how they can put their financial resources behind your leadership makes an enormous difference.
Reframing Entrepreneurship and Calling In Investors
Taryell Simmons: Venture capital often evaluates founders through biased criteria. How do you educate investors on those blind spots?
Thomas Droege: We focus on calling investors in rather than merely calling them out. White culture is steeped in assumptions of pure meritocracy and bootstrapping, which blinds investors to their own structural privilege. For example, traditional VCs expect early-stage founders to raise a friends-and-family round. But they fail to recognize the racial wealth gap. A white founder often has a personal network capable of writing checks totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. The median net worth of Black households means that an African American founder’s network rarely has that disposable liquidity. Penalizing a Black entrepreneur for not having a friends-and-family round is a direct structural bias.
Thomas Droege: Furthermore, modern venture culture celebrates the serial entrepreneur. A white founder can graduate from college, raise venture money, fail completely, and be rewarded with subsequent rounds of capital because investors believe failure teaches valuable lessons. They get seven swings at the bat. We challenge white investors: are you willing to extend that same grace to Black founders? Will you invest in ten Black-led startups knowing that venture economics dictate most will fail before one succeeds, or will you invest in one, watch it struggle, and declare that the demographic does not work? Calling angel investors into that reflection is central to our work.
Dr. Keith Daniel: We must move beyond diversity as a headcount exercise. Thirty years ago, institutions focused merely on diversity. Then the conversation expanded to equity, inclusion, and belonging. True belonging means ownership. I refuse to enter a room as decorative furniture, present merely to satisfy an appearance of inclusion. I enter spaces with the mindset of an owner and a partner shaping outcomes. That requires holding healthy tension: honoring the legacy of leaders like Dr. King, Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael, while building bridges that funnel real capital into our communities.
The Long Game, Portfolio Impact, and Future Vision
Taryell Simmons: What does your portfolio look like today, and what are your hopes for the future of Resilient Ventures?
Dr. Keith Daniel: We currently have eleven portfolio companies across the country—five in the Carolinas, two in Atlanta, one in Detroit, and one in Chicago. Venture capital is a long game with seven to ten year horizons. Several of our companies are already participating in up-rounds, but we remain focused on the long-term journey. Beyond our portfolio, I dedicate ten hours each week to holding thirty-minute advisory calls with entrepreneurs across the country, connecting them with networks even when we cannot invest. We also celebrate our local Durham ecosystem, including spaces like Provident 1898 that foster Black and brown innovators. Our goal is to demonstrate that investing in African American founders generates both social justice and superior financial returns.
Thomas Droege: My hope is that cities across the country—whether San Diego, Atlanta, or Durham—develop localized funds intentionally investing in Black and brown founders. If the broader public understands that the wealth gap is the deliberate outcome of historical economic policy, we can dismantle it through deliberate economic reinvestment. Moving money across that divide is an act of justice.
Taryell Simmons: Where can our listeners connect with you and learn more about Resilient Ventures?
Dr. Keith Daniel: You can visit our website at www.resilient-ventures.com to see our portfolio companies, leadership team, and resources. You can also connect with both Thomas and me on LinkedIn. We are proud Durhamites committed to expanding access, advancing equity, and proving that capital can serve the common good.
Taryell Simmons: Keith and Thomas, thank you both for your courage, wisdom, and leadership. You are setting a standard for what authentic partnership and systemic transformation look like. To our audience, all of their information will be available in the show notes. Thank you for tuning in to Rise Urban Nation.
