Innovator Stories
How often do you meet a CEO who spent his earlier career dedicated to eradicating poverty?
Brandale Randolph is that CEO. Before founding 1854 Cycling, a bike company that seeks to create living-wage jobs for formerly incarcerated people, Randolph co-founded Project Poverty, a nonprofit focused on implementing strategies to reduce poverty. He’s written two books on financial literacy, conducted seminars on workforce readiness, worked with underserved youth in Lubbock, Texas, and given a TEDx talk titled “Stop Throwing Breakfast Sandwiches at the Poor.”
Innovator Stories
Meet Brandale Randolph
How often do you meet a CEO who spent his earlier career dedicated to eradicating poverty?
Brandale Randolph is that CEO. Before founding 1854 Cycling, a bike company that seeks to create living-wage jobs for formerly incarcerated people, Randolph co-founded Project Poverty, a nonprofit focused on implementing strategies to reduce poverty. He’s written two books on financial literacy, conducted seminars on workforce readiness, worked with underserved youth in Lubbock, Texas, and given a TEDx talk titled “Stop Throwing Breakfast Sandwiches at the Poor.”
1854, which is currently developing an e-bike meant to improve community policing, seems like a natural next step for Randolph, who also spent time as a commodities broker before the financial crash in 2008. His approach is rooted in abolition and data analysis—“how can I take metrics to identify who’s in poverty and figure out how we can best help them?” he said. “Let’s not buy turkeys for folks without ovens. How can we change the arc of their lives?”
With 1854, “I wanted to be the person that cuts the paycheck,” he said.
When he founded the company in 2016, Randolph’s research and analysis indicated that formerly incarcerated women were deeply in need of work opportunities and that the cycling industry was in desperate need of more mechanics. Based in Framingham, Mass., he set out to create a company that would train new bike mechanics and pay at least $16 per hour, “but we realized we were taking business from the local bike shops, so we went from there to creating our own brand of single-speed bicycles, and that took off immeasurably,” he said.
In 2019, due to high import tariffs on bike parts, 1854 had to pivot once more, and has since begun working with nonprofit engineering company Draper, based in Cambridge, Mass., to develop the police e-bike. Through all of this, the 1854 brand has stayed consistent: a company dedicated to abolition, sustainability, quality, and community.
“When we bring out new items, I want to make sure the brand survives,” said Randolph. “We wanted to always be there at the forefront, pushing the envelope, but at the end it’s always about creating jobs for the formerly incarcerated.”
Randolph is planning a study for next summer with UMASS-Amherst that will quantify community policing data, and recently tested out a bike-drone combo with the search and rescue team in Wareham, Mass. As 1854 develops its new product, he’s looking at what tools officers need to improve community relations, turn the tide on police brutality, and help connect police to other professionals as they respond to calls involving citizens going through mental health crises, medical issues, or other emergencies that aren’t directly crime-related.
“We know we can’t continue policing communities of color the way we already do,” Randolph said. “It’s not that we want law enforcement not to do their jobs. We want them not to do the jobs they’re not trained for.”
As his work with 1854 continues, Randolph has participated in the MassChallenge program, served as a judge in Lever’s Challenge program, and was named a 2020 Business Leader of the Year by Worcester Business Journal. And he’s been able to offer a lot of advice to other entrepreneurs.
“I think a mistake people make when they’re innovating is they innovate for a world that already exists, not a world that we don’t know,” he said. This is part of his mission with 1854. “The more people innovate for a better tomorrow, the better the world will be. I see a world in which policing is different than it is now–where it is abolished, and we’ve started all over, and it’s something new.”
1854, which is currently developing an e-bike meant to improve community policing, seems like a natural next step for Randolph, who also spent time as a commodities broker before the financial crash in 2008. His approach is rooted in abolition and data analysis—“how can I take metrics to identify who’s in poverty and figure out how we can best help them?” he said. “Let’s not buy turkeys for folks without ovens. How can we change the arc of their lives?”
With 1854, “I wanted to be the person that cuts the paycheck,” he said.
When he founded the company in 2016, Randolph’s research and analysis indicated that formerly incarcerated women were deeply in need of work opportunities and that the cycling industry was in desperate need of more mechanics. Based in Framingham, Mass., he set out to create a company that would train new bike mechanics and pay at least $16 per hour, “but we realized we were taking business from the local bike shops, so we went from there to creating our own brand of single-speed bicycles, and that took off immeasurably,” he said.
In 2019, due to high import tariffs on bike parts, 1854 had to pivot once more, and has since begun working with nonprofit engineering company Draper, based in Cambridge, Mass., to develop the police e-bike. Through all of this, the 1854 brand has stayed consistent: a company dedicated to abolition, sustainability, quality, and community.
“When we bring out new items, I want to make sure the brand survives,” said Randolph. “We wanted to always be there at the forefront, pushing the envelope, but at the end it’s always about creating jobs for the formerly incarcerated.”
Randolph is planning a study for next summer with UMASS-Amherst that will quantify community policing data, and recently tested out a bike-drone combo with the search and rescue team in Wareham, Mass. As 1854 develops its new product, he’s looking at what tools officers need to improve community relations, turn the tide on police brutality, and help connect police to other professionals as they respond to calls involving citizens going through mental health crises, medical issues, or other emergencies that aren’t directly crime-related.
“We know we can’t continue policing communities of color the way we already do,” Randolph said. “It’s not that we want law enforcement not to do their jobs. We want them not to do the jobs they’re not trained for.”
As his work with 1854 continues, Randolph has participated in the MassChallenge program, served as a judge in Lever’s Challenge program, and was named a 2020 Business Leader of the Year by Worcester Business Journal. And he’s been able to offer a lot of advice to other entrepreneurs.
“I think a mistake people make when they’re innovating is they innovate for a world that already exists, not a world that we don’t know,” he said. This is part of his mission with 1854. “The more people innovate for a better tomorrow, the better the world will be. I see a world in which policing is different than it is now–where it is abolished, and we’ve started all over, and it’s something new.”