Genia Stevens has spent more than 25 years learning what happens when a founder cannot get in the room. She is the Founder and CEO of Jumpstart South Central Wisconsin, a regional nonprofit that helps Black and Latino business and nonprofit founders grow across Rock, Jefferson, Green, and Walworth Counties. She is also the Founder and Chief Consultant of Forward Nova Consulting, a strategic planning, business development, and communications firm she built from the ground up. Her message is steady and direct. Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not.
That belief came from experience, not theory. Stevens started her own marketing and communications firm in Beloit about 25 years ago, back when it was called Belwah Media. She had the skills and the drive. What she kept running into were networking circles that felt closed to newcomers, and closed in particular to a Black woman trying to build something. The rooms where deals happened and referrals moved around were not built for people like her. She trained new marketers who went on to win the contracts she was after.
Why Access Became Her Life’s Work
A move changed her thinking. In 2018 she relocated her firm, now called Forward Nova Consulting, to Madison. The difference was immediate. Madison had spaces, resources, and networks where Black and Brown business owners could connect and grow. For the first time, the door was open. That access showed her something she could not unsee. The support she finally found was not a luxury. It was the missing ingredient.
Stevens decided she did not need to wait for someone else to build that kind of support back home. She could build it herself and put it where it was needed most, in the Beloit and Janesville area. She started shaping the idea in the spring of 2019, and the organization launched about six months later in 2020 as Rock County Jumpstart. It was the first Black entrepreneurship program in Rock County. Today it operates as Jumpstart South Central Wisconsin, and its focus reaches across four counties.
She was careful not to simply copy Madison. Beloit has its own history and its own culture, so she recruited legacy Black activists in Beloit to sit on her advisory board and keep her honest about the community she served. Then COVID arrived just as the work was getting started. The classroom plan went out the window, and the team met founders one on one instead. In those early years, Stevens and her small staff worked with more than a hundred business owners and logged thousands of hours of coaching. She learned to treat small wins as big wins, because for many founders, opening a business bank account or facing down a credit score is a major step.
The Ready, Set, Go Framework
Jumpstart South Central Wisconsin is built around a simple path. The Ready, Set, Go framework moves founders through an Incubator, an Accelerator, and an Advanced Accelerator. Each stage meets people where they are and builds on what they learned before. The design reflects how real businesses grow, in steps rather than leaps. You can read more about the ecosystem approach behind this work in Beloit College’s feature on building an ecosystem for Black businesses.
What sets the model apart is where Stevens takes it next. Most entrepreneurship programs stop at business basics. She connects business development with real STEM and technology skills, because that is where opportunity is heading. Through Tech Tank, the TechX Accelerator, a community makerspace, product development and prototyping, and an AI training series, her founders learn to use the tools rather than just hear about them. She teaches adult learners, Black and Brown business owners, not children. The goal is practical fluency that a founder can apply the next morning.
Closing the Tech Skills Gap
The turning point came when Stevens started teaching her clients how to use AI. She showed them how it could help draft a business plan, learn a little code, and automate parts of a business. What she saw was a wide tech skills gap. These were people who had already proven their drive. They simply never received the tech training that others take for granted.
So the organization won a $200,000 Entrepreneurship Partner Grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and built a 16-week tech program with Blackhawk Technical College, Beloit College, and the Beloit Public Library. The grant is helping build a STEM curriculum other communities can adapt, along with a hands-on workspace where founders can create and build. A pilot with Beloit College and Blackhawk Technical College served 18 Rock County entrepreneurs. Local coverage of the state grant supporting expanded tech training traces how the idea moved from concept to classroom, and earlier reporting on the organization’s growth shows the foundation it was built on.
A Voice for Inclusive Entrepreneurship
Stevens brings a rare combination of perspectives to this work. She has run her own businesses for more than two decades, and she served as a Rock County Board Supervisor from 2021 to 2026, so she has worked both the business side and the community side of building a stronger local economy. Her recognition includes an NAACP Community Service Award, a YWCA Woman of Distinction honor, and being named among Wisconsin’s most influential Black leaders. One of her own sayings keeps her grounded when the work gets hard. The higher your expectations, the higher your frustrations.
Her aspirations are as concrete as her programs. She wants the Jumpstart model to grow into something other communities can adopt. She is working toward an annual Community Capital Conference focused on access to funding, cooperative economics, and community wealth. She is finishing a book on leadership and equity, and she wants to become a national voice for STEM inclusion for minority business owners. Above all, she wants to build systems that outlast her, so the work continues long after she steps back.
That is the through line of everything Genia Stevens does. She has stood at the closed door as a founder without access. Now she spends her days building doors and holding them open, especially in STEM and technology, where minority business owners have been left out for too long. You can connect with her on Genia Stevens’ LinkedIn profile.
