In honour of Juneteenth, Known Holdings, a finance and asset management firm, has announced a partnership with Blk Grvty to lead its innovation lab.

To commemorate the partnership announcement, Blk Grvty, A Known Lab, will be making a $100,000 grant to Monique Woodard, the founder and managing director of Cake Ventures — a venture capital fund focused on investing in demographic change.

“At a time when all we seem to hear about is struggles and gaps, I’m delighted that Blk Grvty is focused on the opportunities,” Woodard said. “It means a lot to see their vote of confidence in what I’m building come in the form of something I can put into action directly with the founders I support.”

Known as a finance and asset management firm that manages, structures, and deploys capital into places that matter. Meanwhile, Blk Grvty, a research and innovation company, operates, designs, and deploys capital.

The news comes following the launch of Cake Venture’s $17 million fund to support racialized entrepreneurs in January.

In April, Cake Ventures was also part of a $5 million capital raise for Eli Health, a Montreal-based healthcare technology company committed to enhancing women’s lifelong health through saliva-based hormone testing.

“We always knew that having a philanthropic strategy would be important for our work at Known, but we wanted it to be driven by alternative models,” Jim Casselberry, CEO of Known Holdings, said. “We wanted our philanthropic strategy to build new systems to fuel the changes so deeply needed in finance. In Blk Grvty, we’ve found innovators ideally suited to lead this vision for us. We’re delighted to welcome JaNay and Chipo, and we can’t wait to see the results we’ll achieve as we grow together.”