‘This is serious’: Arian Simone, founder of the Fearless Fund, shares what’s at stake this election

If you want to know how elections can have an impact long after the administration in question has left office, look no further than Arian Simone.

The CEO and co-founder of the Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm launched in 2019 by women of color specifically to invest in women-of-color-led businesses, is still reeling from a nasty legal battle that effectively ended the fund’s Fearless Strivers Grant Contest.

The high-profile legal battle began in August 2023, when the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER), a conservative group led by Edward Blum — the legal strategist behind the cases that led to the dismantling of affirmative action in college admissions — sued the fund. The lawsuit claimed that the Strivers Grant Contest, which provided $20,000 grants exclusively to Black women-owned small businesses, violated Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, a law originally enacted to protect formerly enslaved people that prohibits racial discrimination in private contracts.

In June 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued a preliminary injunction, ruling that the race-exclusive grant program was “substantially likely to violate” the law and was not protected as free speech under the First Amendment. The case was ultimately settled that September, with Fearless Fund agreeing to permanently end the grant contest.

While the case happened during the Biden era, the venture capitalist and author told theGrio in a recent interview, “The previous administration, when Trump was in office, put over 200 and something federal judges in place.”

“You can literally see that every time we had a ruling, every Trump-appointed judge ruled against us,” she said, adding, “And every Obama and Clinton-appointed judge ruled for us. And I said, ‘This cannot be a coincidence by any means.’”

Now, as another election is approaching on Nov. 3, when voters will decide every seat in the U.S. House and roughly one-third of the Senate, determining control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s current term, the outcome will shape everything from legislation and congressional oversight to the Senate’s role in confirming federal judges.

It is an election that the Detroit native, like many others, said “is probably the most consequential election in our lifetime.”

She delves into all of this, including the nitty-gritty of the legal battle, in her new book, “Fearless Freedom: A Manifesto for Unlocking Wealth and Equality for All,” arriving on shelves Tuesday, Oct. 6, with a foreword by Ben Crump and an afterword by Stacey Abrams. Part memoir, part leadership guide, and part playbook, the book takes readers behind the headlines of the Fearless Fund fight while offering practical ideas for entrepreneurs, corporations, investors, and policymakers seeking to expand economic opportunity. 

“I am eager and excited to get this work out into the earth for multiple reasons,” Simone gushed.

For one, she noted we’ve reached a time in culture when Black history, the teaching of it accurately, and the displaying of it in institutions have been met with a lot of opposition. Enter “Fearless Freedom,” which takes us back to several other historical moments, including the Civil Rights era and the Black Power movements, when Black people, particularly Black women, have had to embrace courage and fight fearlessly for freedom.

Growing up in Detroit, Simone was raised in the rare presence of some of the very women who made up the Civil Rights era, including Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Dr. Betty Shabazz, and Juanita Abernathy. In “Fearless Freedom,” the entrepreneur draws on that extraordinary upbringing and the examples of women she watched stand strong long before she would find herself thrust into a civil rights fight of her own.

“Retelling our stories is very important,” Simone stressed.

The book, which the author said would make a great read for college and law students, as well as young minds, also offers practical solutions for achieving a more equitable society. It includes policy examples, model legislation, and playbooks aimed at corporations, government, investors, and entrepreneurs.

“Anyone who picks the book up can actually benefit from it because a more equitable society is a safer society,” she noted.

She added, “I’m just excited to see people who read it and what they take, where they run with it.”

While the book will be brand new on Oct. 6, the Fearless Fund co-founder ironically began working on it long before this election cycle and even before the case that upended the Fearless Fund’s Strivers Grant.

“I started writing this book around 2022, getting solutions for economic justice because I work in the space of reducing the wealth gap,” she recalled. “[The book] became even more necessary after I went through a federal court case, and that for me was important because we were the first case of the anti DEI war.”

At the time, Simone didn’t realize what was happening. It wasn’t until weeks later that she realized exactly what they were up against.

“This was actually a movement that people were funding,” she said. “They had raised $1.5 billion to come against us.”

Even as her own experience has made her acutely aware of what can hang in the balance, she doesn’t think Black women lack any understanding of what’s at stake. 

“To be very frank, Black women are aware of what’s at stake with the election. We turn out more than any other voters,” Simeon reminded.

It’s true, Black women have, in fact, remained one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable voting blocs. In 2024, roughly 9 in 10 Black women, or more precisely, 92%, backed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, according to AP VoteCast.

“Black women are aware. Black women have been aware,” Simone continued, adding, “Black women who were part of the movement back in the 50s and 60s, Black women have always been clear. Other people have just benefited from us saving ourselves.”

Regardless, the CEO said, “This is serious” about what is at stake this election cycle. 

Breaking it down from a “global perspective,” she explained that while Black people make up roughly 14% of the United States’ population, the work of expanding economic access has implications far beyond the United States.

“It does not serve anybody well to oppress, suppress, and to stop funding and getting resources to the largest ethnic group on the planet,” she said. “Because when the largest ethnic group on the planet is properly and fairly treated, properly funded, and properly given resources, it benefits the whole.”

Since the Fearless Fund first made headlines for its legal battle, it has continued to do what it was founded to do, which is to help bolster women of color entrepreneurs. Only now, it’s gone global.

“Fearless Fund has expanded,” Simone shared. “We still operate in the U.S. We still have funds that exist in the U.S. venture capital funds, debt funds, grant funds, all of it. But we have gone global.”

In September 2025, the businesswoman debuted the Fearless Global Initiative in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly, expanding her work around economic inclusion onto an international stage. Then, in March, Fearless Fund Africa officially launched in Accra, Ghana, with a microfinance fund designed to expand access to capital for women entrepreneurs on the continent.

“We have launched Fearless Fund Africa, servicing fast-moving consumer goods, which are product-based businesses on the continent of Africa,” she said.

The expansion comes at a particularly sobering moment for Black women economically. Black women lost roughly 319,000 jobs between February and July 2025, while new Census data released in September found the wage gap for Black women working full-time, year-round actually widened. At the same time, companies, universities, and government agencies have continued to scale back or eliminate DEI initiatives.

For anyone looking at all of that amid the sheer scale of what still needs to change and feeling overwhelmed, Simone offers a much smaller place to start.

“I think if everybody literally does a little, no one has to do a lot,” she advised, adding, “I don’t want anybody to ever feel overwhelmed because when you think about taking such things on like this, it can feel overwhelming. But if everybody just focuses on doing something small as their contribution to society, it will have a big catalytic ripple effect overall.”

That, ultimately, is part of the larger message of “Fearless Freedom.” The longtime investor is under no illusion about how much remains to be done to achieve economic equality.

“We have such a long way to go,” she said, before adding, “But this actually is achievable.”