Jay Bailey, President and CEO of the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs, serves his community by leading a team that empowers entrepreneurs to reimagine what’s possible.
In the heart of Atlanta’s entrepreneurial scene, Jay Bailey, President and CEO of the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs (RICE), is sparking transformation. With a humble touch, Bailey ignites the flames of innovation, providing entrepreneurs with the fuel they need to grow, scale, and thrive. By unlocking doors to opportunity, RICE is propelling Atlanta’s economic engine forward. Bailey’s leadership is a masterclass in empowering others, fostering a community of trailblazers who are redefining industries, creating jobs, and shaping the city’s future. With RICE, Bailey is helping entrepreneurs turn their passions into reality.
You might also like
For years, Atlanta has gained quite a reputation for being considered the Black Mecca due to its large Black population, its Black political power, Black culture, and the wide range of economic opportunities for Black professionals. I’ve been living here long enough to know that a lot of Black people are also here struggling.
Jay Bailey: If you think about Atlanta for everything that’s powerful and positive about it, we’re still the worst city in the country when it comes to income inequality. We’re still the worst city in the country when it comes to economic immobility.
You say Atlanta is the worst city in the country when it comes to income inequality? We seem to be doing so much better based on perception. Was it also this bad when you all founded RICE in 2018?
At the time Atlanta was 52% Black, yet Black businesses were only adding to, or accounted for 8% of the economic growth of our city. I tell people all the time, we leave so much on the table. We lose GDP every year because the brilliant ideas that reside on the south side of I-20 never reach the marketplace because they don’t believe they belong.
I think the only difference between the north side of the tracks and the south side of the tracks is access, opportunity, and exposure. Look at all of the beauty of our skyline in Atlanta. 52% Black population, 54 years of consecutive Black leadership in the Mayor’s office. Show me one building in the Atlanta skyline that’s owned and controlled by somebody who looks like you or me. We have to start focusing on the economics. We cannot go forward if 52% of the population feels like they’re being held back.
So what’s the unique approach that RICE is taking to create real solutions? What was the mindset as you were determining how this business generator would operate?
I’m an entrepreneur at heart, so I didn’t want to recreate a model. One of the greatest economic mobility models that we’ve had in our community for the past 100 years has been our HBCUs. Let’s say I’m a freshman at Clark Atlanta University. I can’t become a sophomore unless I can pass English 101. 1 shouldn’t become a sophomore because I’m not ready to, but at the same time, there’s somebody on that very same campus going after their PhD or their MBA. I’m not in the same classes as them, but I am in the same community. If I have a guy with 85 cents in his pocket, he can be in the same community as somebody who’s running an $85 million business. They’re growing and learning together. Not at the same pace, but within the same community.
That makes a lot of sense. What type of impact has RICE been making so far?
In just six years of programs, we support over 600 entrepreneurs full-time, and touch about 10,000 annually through this network of individuals. Our entrepreneurs aren’t lemonade stands either. They provide over 4,000 jobs in the Metro Atlanta community and generate over $577 million of new economic impact to the city of Atlanta every year. It’s Black entrepreneurs every year generating more economic impact than the World Cup. And we’re just getting started.
That’s definitely the type of energy and statistics that we need to help even the playing field. And congratulations on August 2025 for being a milestone month for RICE. AcknowledgeMINT is grateful to publish our first collaborative magazine issue, and you all rolled out another very important document.
There’s some tremendous momentum happening here. August happens to be National Black Business Month, but in August, we also showed the world what we’ve done in the second volume of our RICE Report. We’re making some big announcements about the trajectory of our organization, how we’ll serve more people, and some of the companies that are coming along to help us make that change happen. This magazine edition will put people on notice about why we’re here, and I want you to pay attention to where we’re going. Not only is it a new edifice of our building where we’ve already added close to 5,000 new square feet, but we’ll start the new phase where we’re adding an additional 9,000 square feet, and we’re not stopping there. This all built, owned, controlled, developed, designed, all of this by us for us with fierce intentionality. This is us, taking care of us, providing our own solutions.
This opportunity has been a great honor that we’ve been looking forward to. We have all intentions of helping you take care of us while continuing to be a part of the solution. The passion that you have for this organization and the people that you serve is unmatched. I have so much more of an understanding of why your team is willing to run through a wall for you.
For all the hell that those who came before me have endured, I just believe in my core that we don’t have the right to fail. And so that kind of motivation has its own battery in the back, where we’re able to say we’ve been blessed with this opportunity to do what others would have only dreamed of. We have the opportunity to be the epicenter of Black economic mobility, and I’m not just talking about for Atlanta, I’m talking about for the world.
As seen in AcknowledgeMINT’s 2025 special edition with the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs.
