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48-year old Kiko Davis is the majority stockholder of Detroit-based First Independence Bank, one of the top 10 largest Black-owned banks in the United States. This makes her the only Black woman in the country who owns a bank.

During an interview with Rolling Out, she said that what makes her unique as an African American female leader is her ability to genuinely connect with people and inspire a culture of synergy. “It’s a God given talent that comes naturally,” she said. “People tend to lend the very best of themselves when they feel leaders are passionate about them and their environment.”

Her inspiration

Kiko says that she is greatly inspired by Shirley Chisolm, the first Black congresswoman and the first major party Black candidate to run for president in 1972. She says her favorite quote by Chisolm is, “In the end, anti-Black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.”

She is also inspired by her late husband, Donald Davis. After his untimely death, she created a foundation in his name to perpetuate his legacy building efforts and initiatives that he envisioned and developed.

How to win

Kiko says that taking risks is very important if you want to become successful. “Without risk,” she says, “there can be no reward… Your mistakes will bring invaluable knowledge that will ultimately become your strategy for winning.”

She also strongly believes in maintaining a positive attitude, and attributes her success to prayer, eating healthy, and exercising.

For more details about Kiko’s company, First Independence Bank, visit www.firstindependence.com or connect with her on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/kiko-davis-ba9756139

 

 

 

Culled from blackbusiness.com

The U.S State Department has announced that applicants for U.S visas will have to submit their social media names and five years’ worth of email addresses and phone numbers as part of the application process.

BBC reports that the proposal would affect about 14.7 million people annually.

Some diplomatic and official visa applicants will be exempt from the new rules.

“We are constantly working to find mechanisms to improve our screening processes to protect US citizens, while supporting legitimate travel to the United States,” the department reportedly said.

Gulf News reports that the U.S Embassy in Abu Dhabi confirmed the news. It quoted the embassy as saying:

This update — which we initially announced last year in the Federal Register — is a result of the President’s March 6, 2017, Memorandum on Implementing Heightened Screening and Vetting of Applications for Visas and other Immigration Benefits and Section 5 of Executive Order 13780 regarding implementing uniform screening and vetting standards for visa applications.

We already request certain contact information, travel history, family member information and previous addresses from all visa applicants. Collecting this additional information from visa applicants will strengthen our process for vetting these applicants and confirming their identity.

In that past, only people who needed additional scrutiny are requested to submit their social media names.

President Donald Trump’s daughter and Advisor Ivanka will help the United States choose its candidate to lead the World Bank but she will not be the one, the White House said on Monday, January 14, 2019.

Jim Yong Kim abruptly announced last week that he would cut short his tenure as President of the Washington-based global development lender more than three years before his second term was to end.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney “have asked Ivanka Trump to help manage the US nomination process as she’s worked closely with the World Bank’s leadership for the past two years,” said Jessica Ditto, the White House Deputy Director of Communications.

However, Ditto said reports that Ivanka Trump “is under consideration are false.”

London’s The Financial Times reported on Friday that both Ivanka Trump and Washington’s former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley were among possible US candidates to replace Kim.

Other names being floated include Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs David Malpass and Mark Green, head of the US Agency for International Development, the newspaper reported.

Through an unwritten post-war agreement with Europe, the World Bank has always been led by an American while a European has always been in charge of the IMF.

Developing nations also have been increasing the pressure on the institutions to name a leader from an emerging market country.

Ivanka Trump in 2017 was the driving force behind a $1 billion, Saudi-supported World Bank fund to promote entrepreneurship by women.

The World Bank Board said on Thursday it would start accepting nominations for a new leader early next month and name a replacement for Kim by mid-April.

 

Credit: Pulse News

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat representing Massachusetts has announced that she has established a presidential campaign exploratory committee to kick off her plan to run for office come 2020.

“In our country, if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to take care of yourself and the people you love,” the Democratic senator from Massachusetts says at the start of the new, 4 1/2 video.

“No matter where you live in America or no matter where your family came from in the world, you deserve a path to opportunity,” Warren continues in the new political video. “That’s the America I am fighting for, and that is why today I am launching an exploratory committee for president.”

A former Harvard law professor and champion of consumer protection, Warren has long been on the shortlist of potential 2020 Democratic candidates. Her fundraising prowess and popularity in progressive circles has left many in Washington referring to her as one of a few early front-runners as well, though more than two dozen other Democrats are also rumoured to be considering presidential runs.

Embedded video

Elizabeth Warren

@ewarren

Every person in America should be able to work hard, play by the same set of rules, & take care of themselves & the people they love. That’s what I’m fighting for, & that’s why I’m launching an exploratory committee for president. I need you with me: http://elizabethwarren.com 

29.7K people are talking about this

Warren’s staff told ABC News the senator will be filing the paperwork for her exploratory committee with the Federal Election Commission Monday and revamping her political and campaign website.

There is only a passing reference to President Donald Trump and his administration in Warren’s new video. Pictures of past and current White House advisers play over Warren’s voice saying, “The whole same is propped up by an echo chamber of fear and hate designed to distract and divide us. If we organize together, if we fight together, if we persist together, we can win,” Warren ends the video, making a subtle reference to a moment on the Senate floor in 2017 that went viral.

 

Credit: LIB

U.S First Lady Melania Trump has arrived at Ghana on Tuesday, October 2 2018, for her first solo trip in that office.

According to AP, Melania was received by Ghana’s First Lady Rebecca Akufo-Addo. She was welcomed with dancing and drumming and schoolchildren waving mini U.S. and Ghanaian flags.

She’ll be visiting Ghana’s neonatal intensive care unit, and then meet President Nana Akufo-Addo .

Melania will be spending five days in Africa, visiting Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt.

She had in August, announced that she’s visiting the continent to learn about “issues facing children” and its “rich culture and history”.

 

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

In 2008, Michelle Obama was tentative on the campaign trail, wary of saying anything to jeopardize her husband’s historic bid to be America’s first black president.

Eight years later, the self-assured first lady — back on the campaign trail — electrified Democratic Party faithful with a passionate takedown of Donald Trump and what she called his “frightening” attitude towards women.

“It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted,” Obama told a rally for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.

“This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable.”

The speech cemented the transformation of Obama, who turns 53 on Tuesday.

Once a reluctant ‘mom-in-chief,’ the tall, toned Princeton and Harvard graduate — America’s first black first lady — has evolved, becoming a singular voice for women and a political dynamo

During her husband’s two terms in the nation’s highest office, the native of Chicago’s South Side — who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment with her parents and older brother — has also become a style icon and global role model.

“One of the most intriguing things about Michelle Obama is that she represents so many things to so many different people,” Peter Slevin, a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the author of “Michelle Obama: A Life,” told AFP.

“She chose her issues, she stayed true to her values and she made the role uniquely her own.”

– From the South Side to Harvard –

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was born in Chicago on January 17, 1964 to a stay-at-home mom and a father who never missed work at a city water plant despite a battle with multiple sclerosis.

She received an Ivy League education at two of the nation’s most elite schools — Princeton and Harvard, where she studied law, as her future husband would also do.

Michelle joined the Sidley Austin law firm in Chicago upon graduation and it was there that she met Barack Obama — a young associate she was asked to mentor.

That meeting would change her life. Obama’s political career skyrocketed, and by January 2009, their family would move into the White House.

– Her causes –

At first, Michelle Obama focused her attention on getting the couple’s two young daughters, Malia and Sasha, settled into their new home.

“Those early years in the White House were a real adjustment for Michelle,” David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to Barack Obama, told CNN.

“She had to start over in so many ways and she had to do it under the watchful eye of the world. And that’s a lot of pressure.”

The first lady soon found her stride, and steered clear of controversy, embracing causes with universal appeal.

Her “Let’s Move” initiative to stamp out childhood obesity through healthy eating and exercise earned praise, as did her work to promote the wellbeing of military families.

Jennifer Lawless, the director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University in Washington, told AFP the “strong argument she made for being active… resonated in a way that a lot of first ladies’ issues don’t hit home.”

In 2015, Obama went global with the “Let Girls Learn” campaign, a cross-agency effort to improve education for teenage girls worldwide.

“She connected powerfully with a wide array of audiences — as a working mother, as a progressive Democrat and, as she herself put it, as a ‘little black girl from the South Side of Chicago’,” Slevin noted.

Throughout her time at the White House, Obama has also emerged as a beacon of support for the US fashion industry.

She turned once little-known designers such as Jason Wu into major style stars, and made it acceptable to wear a cardigan to meet Queen Elizabeth II.

And she embraced social media and pop culture — dancing with late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon, rapping with Missy Elliott in a “Carpool Karaoke” sketch, or doing the mannequin challenge with NBA superstar LeBron James.

“She’s just fundamentally cool. She is comfortable in any kind of setting. She seems real,” Lawless said, adding that her television appearances or viral videos did not seem “artificial — just her embracing the way people communicate.”

– Political force –

Last year, as Clinton and Trump vied for the presidency, Obama took on a new and somewhat unexpected role: political powerhouse.

She was a natural on the campaign trail and a forceful surrogate for Clinton, herself a former first lady.

In October, Obama — a first lady who once shied away from controversy and endured racial slurs throughout her time in Washington from a small fringe of Americans — unleashed a fierce attack on Clinton’s Republican rival.

“This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior. And actually bragging about kissing and groping women,” she said of Trump’s comments caught on video, which he dismissed as guy talk.

“The men in my life do not talk about women like this,” she said. “This is not how decent human beings behave.”

That day, Obama knowingly stepped into the political limelight she had long shunned — and people listened.

“She spent eight years developing a relationship with the American people and they came to trust her,” Lawless told AFP.

 

Moving on –

In an exit interview with CBS, the president admitted his wife was looking forward to regaining some semblance of a normal life.

“Michelle never fully took to the scrutiny,” he said. “She never fully embraced being in the public spotlight — which is ironic, given how good she is.”

Obama has repeatedly said she is not interested in a political career for herself, but could she follow in Clinton’s footsteps, from the role of first lady to elected office?

“In 12 years, if an Illinois senate seat is open and the Democrats have no one to run… who knows what can happen? Life changes and she’s young,” Lawless said.

Source: Guardian.ng