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Small businesses and a big plan

Kamala Harris’s plan could impact D.C. small LGBTQ-owned establishments

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1 month ago

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Jimmy Hopper of Three Fifty Bakery shows off his wares. (Photo courtesy of Hopper)

One of the unique aspects of living and working in Washington is that residents constantly witness how presidential elections shape policy and, in turn, how those policies directly impact daily life.

For some people, policy changes seem irrelevant, but for a growing number of Americans working in small businesses, presidential policy is crucial. These policy shifts that change with the sitting president can often mean the difference between having a thriving business, or no job at all.

In September, Vice President Kamala Harris announced her economic plan to help small businesses grow. This plan, which she has called her “Entrepreneurs and Innovators Policy Plan,” attempts to address some of the biggest issues that small business owners face when starting and growing their businesses.

The Washington Blade sat down with several LGBTQ business owners in Washington to discuss how they feel the vice president’s plan could impact them if she gets elected.

David Burton, the owner of the Capital Candy Jar, a candy maker and shop, was excited to hear about the policy’s goal to increase access to capital for underserved communities, especially within the LGBTQ community.

When he began his candy business 10 years ago, Burton lacked the large access to capital he needed to get things started, so he relied on generous hello from family and friends.

“This is going to be a game changer for a lot of startups,” Burton said. “When I was first starting out I was calling friends and family and maxing out every credit card I had, begging people to loan me money for three or four months until I could get through the holiday season and pay them. Luckily, I had some very generous and really kind people in my life that were able to help me.”

This issue of high startup costs is not unusual for small businesses. These high initial costs can act as a barrier for potential entrepreneurs.

Jimmy Hopper, owner of Three Fifty Bakery in Dupont Circle, says he experienced these issues when he opened the bakery 10 years ago.

“For new business, it’s really tough,” Hopper said. “You can either use your own money or you get loans from friends because banks will not give you a loan unless you have collateral. When I opened the bakery, I pretty much spent all of my savings, my retirement, everything to open the bakery, because there was nothing available for me.”

One of the ways the vice president is attempting to alleviate this stress of high startup costs is by launching the largest-ever direct federal investment in small business incubators and accelerators. This program would provide small businesses with resources, mentorship, and networks during the first few years of the company to encourage growth.

In her policy, Harris wants to change the startup expense deduction of $5,000 to $50,000, which is 10 times bigger than it stands now.

Joshua Hill, the co-founder and principal at Hill & Hurtt Architects and president of the Equality Chamber of Commerce, Washington’s nonprofit LGBTQ business organization, feels this policy could especially help LGBTQ business owners when starting up.

“I think so many LGBTQ businesses, and potential future business owners are starting at a disadvantage, potentially, right?” Hill said. “They have been discriminated against in their workplace. So they launch their own business. And in the D.C. area, it’s a lot better than it is in other parts of the country, for sure, or other parts of the world, but they’re still starting at a disadvantage.”

Hill continued, saying that providing this access to capital is one clear way to alleviate these disadvantages.

“Most people don’t have the opportunity to sock away 50K for living expenses while they’re making nothing and building their business,” he said. “I think that, certainly for me, would have helped just move things along more quickly.”

Another large aspect of Harris’s Entrepreneurs and Innovators Policy Plan is to simplify tax filing for small businesses.

The way that taxes are collected for small businesses in the U.S. is very complex and requires lots of information from the business owner. A very simplified view of this process includes finding the right tax form (singular owners use one tax form whereas corporations and partnerships each have their own different set of forms), report on the income and payroll of the business, calculate their sales tax, claim deductions and credits for various business expenses, calculate state tax, and then pay off the taxes.

This complex taxing process has lots of places where one error in reporting could cost a business time, money, or possibly jail time.

Harris’s plan advocates for the development of a standard deduction in the tax code, like how individual people file taxes that Harris argues can save small businesses time and money by simplifying filing.

Every person the Blade interviewed did say they hire a tax expert, either an accountant or a tax attorney, to help them keep their taxes in line. Collectively, the business owners felt that by simplifying how the business taxing process goes, their businesses could save time and money.

“Once you get into business, unless you’re an accountant, you probably have to pay someone to do your business taxes,” Burton explained. “The problem is, the bigger you get, the more they charge you. And that can add up very quickly, the bigger you get in the more complex it gets.”

Another concern raised by some LGBTQ business owners is the lack of a unified system for filing different levels of taxes, which makes the process more challenging.

“I think that’s where the most challenges were because you have the state, the local, federal, and it’s a lot of filings to keep track of, especially someone who doesn’t have a huge tax background,” said Hopper. “And a lot of the forms, in my opinion, are unnecessary but you still have to file them- even if they’re [the tax] $0, or you get assessed with a penalty.”

Hill, whose architecture firm works in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., felt that he was having difficulty making sure that he complied for every state he worked in.

“As an architect where our business is in D.C. but we do work in Maryland, the income that we make from clients in Maryland has to be reported differently, and it’s taxed differently,” Hill said. “That goes for any companies that are a service based company. So it can get complicated pretty quickly. The more simple it can be, that’s another win on the financials, with time and money savings. Wouldn’t you rather be spending that time building your business or marketing or doing the things you love, instead of filling out tax forms or paying someone to do that?”

Harris’s plan also calls for 25 million new small business applications by the end of her first term. The plan explains this can be achieved by reducing excessive occupational licensing requirements, encouraging states and local governments to cut red tape, expanding capital to underserved communities — including the LGBTQ community, and by expanding the rural partners network nationwide to all states and territories.

The business owners also mentioned this ambitious goal, which reflected many of the points they had made earlier — specifically by supporting small businesses and simplifying red tape.

“I think you have to make it easy for people to start businesses, because there are a lot of regulations and roadblocks,” Burton said. “It seems that it’s very challenging to learn all the regulations as you start a business. So you might have a great idea, but then all of a sudden, you go to get your business license and find out ‘Oh, there’s all these other things you have to do.’

I think anything that can be done to remove regulatory roadblocks to starting businesses is going to help, because it’s not just LGBT ones. And then the second one, I, as I said before, I think is access to capital. I was super fortunate that I had savings and things that I could live on for the first year and even partially for the second and third years. But most people don’t have that, and so you might have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t afford to feed yourself, then you’re not going to start a business.”

Hill was surprised to read that during the Biden presidency a record 19 million new business applications were filled and felt if the focus stays on nourishing the small business that make up America, Harris can do it.

“I was pretty impressed by that stat, because the 19 million in new recorded business applications was from the start of the Biden-Harris administration, so three and a half-ish years, and now our goal is 25 million in the first year,” Hill said. “It’s a huge jump. I kind of see this as two, as two parts.

“One is the investment in the main streets and even the bids, would be really important. It’s interesting, because you can walk down the street and you can, like, all over the city, and there’s lots of missing teeth. There’s lots of shops that closed after COVID or shops that have closed because the COVID impact was just too much for them. And it seems like it’s taking a long time to get new folks to move in and start up. I feel like that, as a broad generalization, is happening all over the country. We live in D.C., where I think things are generally more stable than most parts of the country.”

“I think the other thing would be to not just focus on those main streets and bids in general, but also specifically in areas that need more money,” Hill added. “Places that have been either devastated by natural disasters that are low income, the places where parts of the infrastructure that need to be updated, that are that are falling apart. I feel like we really need to focus on those parts of our cities and do it in a way that, I mean, this is me getting on my soapbox a little, but do it in a way that really is about lifting up the people in the communities that are there, and the cultural heritage of those communities, and not just tearing things down and moving people out and gentrifying the area.

I think that if you’re really serious about this 25 million new business applications in the first year then I think that those are places where you can do a lot.”

Hopper, on the other hand, felt the focus should not be on getting a goal of applications in, but rather on supporting the small businesses currently struggling.

“So what gets me there a little bit, is applications,” Hopper said. “It’s easy to get applications, but how hard is it going to be for those applications to get any kind of funding? It is kind of everything we’ve talked about with helping a small business. If you don’t do that, you can have all those applications, but none of them turn out to be a business that’s actually opened unless you really back it up.”

Then, Michael Graham, Hopper’s partner, chimed in and explained he felt this could be achieved if more support was provided as the business grows through a sort of government assisted networking or mentorship program.

“I drive by coffee shops in areas, and I’m like ‘I know what it takes to run that here,” Graham said. “‘We’re in Dupont, I know how many cups of coffee you have to sell, how many people you have to have come in to make it.’ So when you see a business that opens and you’re like ‘Okay they just, if they did this, and if they did this it would make them successful.’ So I think maybe if the government had a better understanding, or putting that information out there through all of the agencies that you have to deal with, with opening a business, if you knew your LGBTQ contact for that department that would be super helpful, at least.”

One thing not mentioned in Harris’s plan that these business owners felt would greatly help improve the growth of LGBTQ businesses is to get a designated protected class status for the LGBTQ community. This status would safeguard LGBTQ people against discrimination from businesses and government entities.

This, although it would greatly help all aspects of being a member of the LGBTQ community, is difficult to achieve. This would require congress to pass legislation codifying the group as a protected class into law.

Burton believes that gaining this protected status and securing access to the 5 percent minimum of jobs reserved for minority-owned businesses within government contracts would strengthen the LGBTQ business community.

“The full 10 years we have been as an LGBT owned business, and every year, especially during pride month, I get a lot of business from people wanting to support LGBT owned businesses. There is nothing in the federal government right now that requires the federal government to support specifically LGBT owned businesses. Putting that in, I think that it would benefit all LGBT owned businesses.”

Hopper and Graham agreed, but felt the status impact on directly protecting discrimination lies at the heart of it.

“Let’s be real,” Graham said. “We are a minority, and we’re still fighting for our rights every single day.”

“If we were both straight white guys and we were opening a business anywhere, we’re not going to ever be discriminated against,” Hopper added. “A building owner isn’t going to be like, ‘Oh, you’re two straight white guys. I don’t want to lease to you.’ But I could see some businesses where you could go to the landlord and be like, ‘We want to lease your space for a kitchen,’ only to find out that they are not going to lease to you because they don’t agree with you being gay. I think being a protected class, a protected minority, would help keep you from being discriminated against, and that affects you opening your business, running your business, or any of that.”

Hill read through the policies and noticed LGBTQ businesses weren’t highlighted like other minority groups were. That caused him to start thinking as both a business owner and as president of the Equality Chamber of Commerce, where he felt this protected status would allow for a broader sense of community within the LGBTQ business community.

“One thing that definitely made sense to me was this connection to organizations like the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce and if there is a way to encourage more of LGBTQ owned businesses to join groups,” Hill said. “There’s so many people who don’t even know that this group exists, but that that is a key to giving those groups access to broader contracts. You know a lot more in terms of supplier diversity and really bringing money directly into the LGBTQ community.”

When asked if they believe Harris’s “Entrepreneurs and Innovators Policy Plan” would directly help them as an LGBTQ-owned business, each person emphatically said yes.

“I think so many people would benefit from this, and the people that we care so much about,” Hill finished. “It’s the American dream, Right? Finding something that you’re excited or passionate about and starting your own business. Everyone should have that opportunity.”

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Delve Deep Learning harnesses AI to revolutionize public affairs work

LGBTQ-owned D.C. company makes tech accessible for clients

Published

2 months ago

on

October 9, 2024

By

Kyle Huwa and Jeff Berkowitz of Delve Deep Learning

From senior federal officials like White House staffers and lobbyists who need to keep abreast of international and domestic politics, to bookstore owners who need to stay informed on the latest news to provide an engaging and relevant space for customers, the city of Washington depends on the news.  

One queer-owned start-up in the nation’s capital has recognized the need for fast and extensive information collection and is working on a solution. The start-up, Delve Deep Learning, is taking steps to make finding all information on any topic as easy as a Google search through the monstrously powerful tool of AI.   

Two executives from the new information start-up Delve Deep Learning sat down with the Washington Blade to discuss how their work is attempting to change the way professionals think and work in the capital.  

To grasp how Delve is transforming the way Washington operates, it’s essential to first understand what Delve is. 

“About 10 years ago, [I] founded Delve,” Jeff Berkowitz, founder and CEO told the Blade. “It is a competitive intelligence and risk advisory firm focused on helping public affairs professionals navigate all the different stakeholders and complex policy issues that they have to deal with.”  

Kyle Huwa, Delve’s research manager, offered a simpler explanation of their work: “Delve is a consulting company specializing in public affairs intelligence.” 

Delve provides its clients with a monitoring program to keep track of challenges they may face as well as on-demand research tools to help respond to those challenges. Their clients, which range from industry associations to policymakers, use this information to look to the future to find the best path forward using AI.  

“Public affairs professionals have the daily and weekly task of staying on top of any number of issues for their clients and their companies,” Huwa said. “From news articles to bills, regulations, press releases, social media posts, from stakeholders. There’s just an overwhelming load of information that they have to process. What we’re doing is taking all of that information, bringing it into one place, and using AI models to really surface the content that is most relevant to what public affairs professionals need to know.” 

The “most relevant” information, Huwa explained, widely varies per client. Some uses of Delve include watching the progress of a piece of legislation through a state government, an old forgotten regulation passed by a government organization, or news on current events in another part of the world. Regardless of what they are tracking, Delve wants to make finding what their clients are looking for easier.  

The program, Berkowitz explains, was started initially to help its own employees but was soon found to be valuable more broadly.  

“The platform really started as an internal tool at Delve,” Berkowitz said. “When Chat GPT 3.5 came along, we started to see the promise of generative AI. It’s the first technology I saw where it can’t replace our team members, but we can train it just like we can team members and make it a real co-pilot for the analysis that public affairs professionals need to do every day.”

It soon became evident that this application could change the way research in public affairs is conducted. 

“It really became clear that this was something that every public affairs team needs and that we didn’t necessarily need to be the intermediary between the technology platform and them,” Berkowitz added. “We could really imbue the AI models with our approach and methodology, and put it directly in their hands.” 

This in turn, the duo explained, saved precious time and money for their clients to more effectively research what needed to be done next.  

To understand how this saves precious time and money for their clients, Huwa explained how it differs from any general web search. 

“Historically you do this with keywords, right?” Huwa said. “You might search in Google with a keyword, but with keywords, you have to really guess exactly the right keywords. Sometimes your search return would be too broad, other times it would be too narrow because you didn’t guess all of the keywords that impacted your issue. With AI, we’re able to really go beyond keywords and identify the content, the news, the bills, etcetera, that a user is looking for in the same way that an analyst would use critical thought to find and sift through content. Once we surface that content for users, we’re helping them organize it into reports. We’re helping them draft language insights about that content. It’s really a way to save time and help them get to those insights more effectively.”  

Berkowitz told the Blade time is extremely valuable to those in the public affairs sector. Many of which are working against the clock to push their candidates, policies, or thoughts into the spotlight before their opponent.  

“Our mission is to save public affairs teams 1 million hours in the next five years because they spend too much time trying to figure out what’s going on in the world and how it impacts their organizations or clients,” Berkowitz explained. “Right now, they spend two plus hours a day, on average, that’s 25% of their work week, which only leaves them 75% of their work week to do 100% of their actual job, advocating on behalf of their clients or their organizations.”

This information in turn allows Delve’s clients more time to develop strategies to deal with potential issues ahead.  

“Our goal is to make sure that that surprise is no longer the standard for public affairs teams, because that’s really the reality today,” Berkowitz said. “There’s just so much information flying at them so fast that it’s impossible to keep on top of everything.” 

While extremely helpful in surfacing information, there are other aspects of AI that have some people scared — particularly when it comes to abusing AI to promote misinformation as truth.  

Berkowitz said he is not worried about their platform being misused.  

“For our platform there’s not really a great risk because there’s no access to the prompt,” he said. “That’s all behind the scenes in the workflows. It’d be difficult for somebody to misuse our product. But more broadly, misinformation has been with us for longer than AI has been around. If I was working at a Chinese or Russian troll farm, I would be worried about losing my job to AI, but misinformation has been with us for a long time. It’s going to continue to be with us.” 

The way to deal with misinformation, Berkowitz said, is to inform people on how to spot it.  

“The best defense against that is a more educated populace,” he said. “The more we help folks understand what’s real and what’s not. I think that’s going to keep getting more challenging as AI gets more effective in creating videos, creating avatars, creating these different forms of content.” 

“Our platform’s job is to surface all of the content that’s out there,” Huwa added. “I think it’s an ongoing process that that kind of everyone in the data space is confronting, to figure out how you sift through, how you address misinformation when there are more than a million news articles coming online every day.” 

Berkowitz pointed out that in some cases misinformation may be what the client needs to find and if AI doesn’t show it, it would be significantly less helpful.  

“It depends on folks’ use cases,” Berkowitz said. “Some folks really only want those trusted news sources and trusted sources of information, and we’re giving them the ability to filter, to only get those. If you’re doing reputational issues as a public affairs professional, you need to see the crazy stuff, even if it’s not true, right? We’re going to surface that stuff, even if it is misinformation because we need to flag it so that the folks that have the ability to correct the record can address that.”  

While they do not fear the potential for misinformation on their AI platform, they are concerned about training the system to avoid bias. 

“I think especially when it comes to AI, there has to be an extra sensitivity to having diversity of experiences and backgrounds in representation,” Berkowitz said. “These AI models, especially these foundation models, are trying to create this foundation of knowledge of the world. If you’re only including certain types of experiences, you’re not going to get the true foundation of the world.” 

One reason Berkowitz and Huwa care deeply about preventing prejudiced thinking to impact their AI models is because of their identity as gay men and their experience with prejudiced people.  

“As LGBT founders, if you look at some of the core values that we’re bringing into Delve Deep Learning, one of our core values is to build with precision and transparency,” Berkowitz added. “I think being able to be open and clear about what we’re doing is certainly something that can be a challenge for a lot of LGBT folks growing up. One of our other core values is to make sure that we’re building without silos — that it’s a very collaborative process, and everybody is included… Isn’t it great making sure that we’re kind of building without those walls in place? I think that that sort of comes from the ethos that I think a lot of folks that identify as LGBT wish they had in more spaces.” 

Huwa sees their experience as gay men almost in parallel to being a start-up founder.  

“I think some of the journey as an LGBT person is figuring out how to confront challenges,” Huwa said. “I think starting a business that’s really pressing into a new area, a new technology, and trying to be on the cutting edge of that technology is just the process of taking risks and overcoming challenges.” 

Huwa also referenced the support Delve got from Growth Lab, a startup accelerator that provides mentoring, education, and networking opportunities for companies founded by LGBTQ entrepreneurs, for their help in providing resources to confront their challenges. 

“Having Growth Lab as a resource and having other people who’ve experienced being both LGBT founders and starting a business, which is a big undertaking, right?” Huwa said. “I think one of the benefits of being a co-founder and LGBT identifying is that you do have that community that can support you. Growth Labs has been a great resource there. It’s nice to have that community support.” 

With support from organizations like Growth Lab, the tech industry is increasingly embracing diversity.  

“I think for LGBT folks specifically, tech is fairly inclusive, particularly in the political tech space,” Berkowitz said. 

Huwa went as far as to say that he would encourage anyone within the LGBTQ community to start looking into technology and the possibilities within AI to make their world a better place.  

“Coming from the technical side, I would advise anyone even remotely interested in learning more about AI to just dive in and start learning how to prompt well and start testing out the different tools,” Huwa said. “The great thing about AI as a technology is that it is really accessible to everyone — for LGBT individuals, for anyone underrepresented in the tech space. Also you have access to these tools and can start learning how to use them. I think that can be really helpful as you look for a job, as you think about maybe trying to start and create a startup yourself.”

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Heather Lawver’s journey to growth, inclusion with Ceemo.ai at StartOut’s Growth Lab

‘A program that embraces unique challenges LGBTQ+ founders have’

Published

8 months ago

on

May 3, 2024

By

Jake Hannigan is Program Manager of StartOut.

In the bustling world of startups, where innovation and diversity intertwine to forge new pathways, Heather Lawver, founder and CEO of D.C.-based Ceemo.ai stands out not just as a visionary entrepreneur but as a beacon of inclusivity and determination. Her journey to build Ceemo.ai, an advertising and branding platform dedicated to revolutionizing how startups conceive and market their brands, has reached a pivotal milestone with its selection into StartOut’s esteemed Growth Lab Accelerator, sponsored by J.P. Morgan. 

With less than one percent of startup funding being allocated toward LGBTQ+ founders in 2023, according to a recent StartOut study, this five-month program is critical in providing resources and education to help LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs grow and compete. 

Ceemo.ai joins eight other companies nationwide for this exclusive five-month training program.

A commitment to inclusion

Lawver founded Ceemo.ai in 2021 as a way to help entrepreneurs build better brands and seamlessly apply them to the marketing and pitch materials they need to launch the company of their dreams. The company’s simple five-step brand quiz helps founders think strategically about how they want to be perceived by their customers to then generate a full brand book with wordmark logo, color scheme, and font suite. Ceemo then applies that new brand book to a full suite of marketing and pitch materials, giving founders a roadmap to making sales and securing investment.

Her application to the Growth Lab Accelerator cohort was driven by more than the desire for business growth; it was fueled by her longstanding volunteer work with StartOut and a profound commitment to fostering an environment where LGBTQ+ founders are not only included but celebrated. 

The selection of Ceemo.ai for StartOut’s Growth Lab, an accelerator known for its top-quality mentoring, education, and networking opportunities tailored for LGBTQ+ founders, marks a pivotal chapter in Lawver’s mission to help cultivate a more inclusive entrepreneurial landscape.

“Being in an accelerator where I’m not the only queer person in the room is not just empowering; it’s transformative,” she shares. “It means so much to be selected for a program that embraces the unique challenges LGBTQ+ founders have, and these issues are not just acknowledged but are central to the narrative of success and innovation.”

“The founders in our 2024 Cohort are problem solvers, developing unique products and solutions across a range of industries, from technology and software to food and beverage,” said David Barbee, Head of LGBTQ+ Initiatives, J.P. Morgan Commercial Banking. “As they continue to scale, these companies will need access to resources like capital and banking solutions, investors and business advisors. We are proud to provide mentorship and access to our firm-wide capabilities to help them reach the next level.” 

“This platform is not just an accelerator; it’s a community where the unique challenges and triumphs of LGBTQ+ founders are acknowledged, celebrated, and used as a springboard for groundbreaking business success,” said Lawver. 

Ambitious goals for bright future

Over the past decade, Lawver’s expertise in enhancing pitch decks and fundraising strategies has been instrumental in securing more than $170 million for minority entrepreneurs across various demographics, including women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled individuals, and seniors. 

Her vision for her time in the five-month cohort is characterized by ambition and a keen focus on leveraging the program’s resources to scale Ceemo.ai’s impact. Her top goals include refining the platform’s Crunchbase algorithms to offer unparalleled market insights for startups, enhancing their organic sales funnels, and forging strategic partnerships with tech giants like Canva, Adobe, Google, Shopify, and Squarespace. These objectives are not just growth metrics but stepping stones towards revolutionizing how startups approach branding and marketing in a highly competitive digital landscape.

(Founded in 2009, StartOut, a national 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, is the largest national organization to support LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs with more than 28,000 members nationwide. Its mission is to accelerate the growth of the LGBTQ+ community to drive its economic empowerment, building a world where every LGBTQ+ entrepreneur has equal access to lead, succeed, and shape the workforce of the future.)

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New owners of Color Lab Salon by TSR have big plans

Fresh outlook, expanded services planned at Connecticut Avenue facility

Published

11 months ago

on

January 11, 2024

By

(Left to right) Sandy Campbell, Rick Baker, and Thomas Shelton.

Thomas Shelton, Sandy Campbell, and Rick Baker are the new owners of Color Lab Salon by TSR, formerly known as VSL Harlow.

They have given the salon a new name and outlook in hopes of getting the shop back to its former glory.

“Fifteen to 20 years ago there were lines out of the door and it was the place to go in the community,” said Shelton “We want to get it back to that.” 

Shelton and Campbell have been doing hair for more than 20 years. Shelton even worked at VSL Harlow shortly, before opening his own salon. 

Baker is the only owner who doesn’t do hair but he can typically be found at the front desk of Color Lab. 

When the former owners of VSL Harlow approached Shelton about taking over the salon he knew he couldn’t do it alone. So, he called Campbell and just a month later they were signing the lease to the building. 

After some demolition work to update the space, Color Lab Salon was up and running. 

In addition to Campbell and Shelton there are six other hairstylists, a waxer, nail tech, and threading artist. 

This year they plan to add mani-pedis to their services, something that Campbell said he is really excited for. 

“I figure if you offer all types of services people will always want to come,” said Campbell.

In addition to offering new services this year they are also implementing a new education system. Campbell and Shelton said that education and staying on top of trends in the hairstyling community will help to attract more customers.  

“We want to be trendsetters and education is a big part of that,” said Shelton. 

The Color Lab is open seven days a week at 1607 Connecticut Ave., N.W.

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