Business & Organizational Development Scholar & Practitioner
Access to Capital. Business Development. Researcher.
About Desha Elliott
Business. Media. Research. Tech.
Desha is a business development enthusiast and strategic partnerships creator with a successful track record of creating and executing business strategy for both growth stage and established companies. After spending over a decade as an entrepreneurship scholar and business developer, she later impacted emerging businesses with her financial industry partners in providing access to capital training and fundraising tools.
Education
Desha Elliott is an alumna of Northern Kentucky University and Strayer University. She earned her Ph.D. from Clark Atlanta University, focusing on policy, access to capital, and entrepreneurship. As a graduate student researcher, she assisted with Georgia's guaranteed income study and founded the Professional Doctoral Network to enhance doctoral student engagement. Desha defended her research on access to capital for Black women entrepreneurs and alternative finance lending with honors.
Business Development
Desha spent twenty years in media and tech being a business developer . She started her first digital and public relations marketing company, DrDesha LLC to establish campaigns and executions for music and sports industry. Big projects she architected/project-led are Make My City Proud with Def Jam, Reebok Mid Question Launch Campaign and WorldScout Music Conference.
She was Editor-In-Chief of nationally distributed Be Your Own Success Story Magazine and winner of the Celebration Bowl Hackathon for her edutech company, PB7App. PB7APP had influencer participation from Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Kimario McFadden and was a participant at Northern Kentucky University's INKUbator program.
Program Development
Desha's knowledge and skillset of marketing and access capital has been used to architect and create discourse for national financial institutions, corporate backed accelerators, and university research initiatives. Most noted programs, USDA-AMS BIPOC Project Titled "Evaluation Programs Successes and Challenges with Focus on Socially Disadvantaged Communities", Black Farmers Equity Initiative, Doordash Accelerator for Local Restaurants, Digital Undivided, and more. These programs allow for underserved businesses to gain insight on starting, scaling, and growing their business as well as obtaining access to capital.