Durham native Shelly Bell built a national network for women founders of color

Shelly Omílàdé Bell, who is also known as Omi Bell, has built a career around creating platforms for entrepreneurship, creativity and connection. Born in Durham, she later became the founder and chief executive of Black Girl Ventures, a social enterprise focused on supporting women founders of color.

Bell studied computer science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Her professional path began in K–12 education, before expanding into business ownership and community-based arts work.

One of her early ventures was MsPrint USA, a custom clothing and merchandise printing company run by women. The business served clients including Amazon and Google, according to the biographical account. Bell also organized poetry performances and led Seven City Art Society, a community arts organization.

That arts work developed into Made By a Black Woman, a marketplace featuring clothing, accessories and home décor made and curated by women of color. The project connected Bell’s interest in creative expression with a broader focus on visibility and economic opportunity.

In 2016, Bell started Black Girl Vision as a meetup group of 30 women. She later renamed the organization Black Girl Ventures. Its stated purpose was to help women founders of color connect with peers, investors, advisers and mentors, while also building support from corporations and local government.

The organization grew from Bell’s concern that Black women entrepreneurs lacked visibility and access to opportunities. In that sense, her work has addressed entrepreneurship as a community ecosystem rather than simply as individual business ownership. Her ventures have combined networking, marketplaces, arts programming and business support.

For Durham, Bell’s biography offers a local example of how a city-born entrepreneur carried ideas developed through education, creative work and small-business experience into a wider platform. Her career links several forms of community infrastructure: a marketplace for creative goods, a network for founders and a set of relationships intended to connect entrepreneurs with resources and guidance.

Bell’s professional story also shows a progression across sectors. She moved from teaching into printing and merchandise, from arts organizing into marketplace development, and then into startup ecosystem building. Across those stages, the focus remained on creating greater access and visibility for women of color in creative and entrepreneurial spaces.

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Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/339393 - https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/meet-the-24-rising-brand-stars-bringing-a-new-wave-of-energy-to-washington-d-c/ - https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollysprayregen/2018/10/26/shelly-bell-founder-of-black-girl-ventures-helps-women-of-color-gain-access-to-capital/ - https://afro.com/shelly-bell-one-stop-entrepreneurial-force-nature-based-se-d-c/ - https://afrotech.com/for-shelly-bell-funding-black-and-brown-women-entrepreneurs-is-personal - https://newsone.com/3834104/shelly-bell-black-girl-ventures/ Image rights Photograph description: Community Garden Wharton Park Creator: Colin Kinnear. License: CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACommunity_Garden_Wharton_Park_-_geograph.org.uk_-_7085978.jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.