User:Oughtta Be Otters/sandbox/ReShondaYoung

ReShonda Young

entrepreneur from Waterloo, Iowa.

She started and franchised a popcorn business, Popcorn Heaven

--sold in 2019

landlord

director of an accelerator that supports Black business owners in Waterloo

leading force behind an effort to open what would be Iowa’s only Black-owned bank.

Liz Mathis boght popcorn heaven from Young in 2017

won a federal lawsuit in 2020 over alleged discriminatory lending practices.

Young, along with a group of plaintiffs from around the U.S., claimed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wasn't following Dodd-Frank Act requirements to reduce discrimination against women-owned, minority-owned and small businesses. Mathis also noted that banks are required to give a percentage of loans to women and minorities.

Lawsuit here: https://democracyforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/1071-amended-complaint.pdf

No one has opened a new bank with majority Black ownership in more than 20 years.

Young’s parents and grandparents were born in Mississippi, and all sharecropped.

-- focused on country’s enduring racial wealth gap

ReShonda Young fought to ensure the Affordable Care Act, now known as Obamacare, became law. She traveled to Washington, D.C., testified before Congress and explained the positive impact the law would have on her father's business.

--When she opened Popcorn Heaven in 2014, she was grateful to have an affordable health insurance option for her employees.

--Young was one of a half-dozen speakers gathered at her Waterloo business Wednesday calling on Iowa's congressional delegation to keep Obamacare.

New Jerusalem Ministries, a ministry of Jubilee United Methodist Church Resource Center, will conduct a program and awards ceremony Tuesday at the church at East Fourth and Newell streets -- ReShonda Young, 2017 Janice Bryant Howroyd Trailblazer Award

ReShonda Young, the owner of Popcorn Heaven in Waterloo, said in a statement issued by the Main Street Alliance, a national network of small business organizations.

When ReShonda Young started Popcorn Heaven, she did not want it to look like a "mom and pop shop." She wanted her gourmet popcorn and fudge store to feel like a place people had seen and heard of before. Ten months after Popcorn Heaven popped into existence near downtown Waterloo in February 2014, another store popped up in South Carolina. Then another. Then another and another. And more are on the way.