Nine Years of Dope Black Girls: A Brunch That Made Room for Celebration and Connection

Black Girls Vote and Color Vision welcomed more than 300 guests to The Hamilton Live during Congressional Black Caucus weekend for an afternoon honoring Laura Coates, Nicole Venable and Janeese Lewis George.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Sunday, September 20, more than 300 guests gathered at The Hamilton Live for the ninth annual Dope Black Girls Brunch. Hosted by Black Girls Vote and Color Vision during Congressional Black Caucus weekend, the event brought women together for an afternoon of recognition, conversation and joy.

For nine years, the brunch has created space to celebrate Black women while they are in the room to feel it. This year’s honorees, Laura Coates, Nicole Venable and Janeese Lewis George, represented different paths to leadership and influence. Guests came to recognize what each woman has built, hear from them directly and spend time with a community that understands the value of showing up for one another.

DJ Lil Bacon Bear welcomed guests with music as the room filled. Black Girls Vote founder Nykidra Robinson and Color Vision founder Mia Davis opened the program, with Brittany Packnett Cunningham serving as mistress of ceremonies. The afternoon moved between moments onstage and conversations around the tables, giving guests time to connect while enjoying the celebration.

Coates, Venable and Lewis George were honored for work that reaches across media, business and public service. Their recognition was a chance to look beyond titles and acknowledge the persistence, choices and responsibility behind them. Each has used her voice and position to make an impact, and each was met with a room ready to celebrate her.

Featured speaker Dominique Broadway brought the conversation back to money, ownership and what it means to build a future on your own terms. She spoke to the importance of knowing where you stand financially and believing that greater possibilities are within reach. Her message fit a room full of women who are building careers, caring for others and making big decisions about what comes next. It also gave guests something practical to carry beyond the brunch: the reminder that they deserve access to information that helps them make those decisions with confidence. It was the kind of conversation that continued at the tables long after she left the stage.

The bar had a signature menu created for the occasion. The Rémy V Drop combined Rémy V, Cointreau, lemon juice, simple syrup and a lemon twist. The Classy Dope Black Girl featured Champagne de Telmont, while the Black Girls Vote cocktail paired Edmond’s Honor Madagascar Vanilla Bourbon with coffee liqueur, vanilla syrup and espresso. Guests raised glasses to the honorees, reconnected with friends and made new introductions throughout the afternoon.

“For nine years, this brunch has been a chance to tell Black women that we see them and that they deserve to be celebrated,” said Davis. “Our honorees have done extraordinary work, and I wanted them to feel the love in that room. I also wanted every guest to leave with a new connection, a good memory and a reminder that there is a community cheering her on.”

By the end of the program, guests were still talking, taking photographs and finding reasons to stay a little longer. That is part of what has kept the Dope Black Girls Brunch going for nine years. The honorees give the room something to celebrate, and the women who gather there give it its spirit.

The 2026 brunch was a reminder that recognition matters most when people can share it. At The Hamilton Live, more than 300 guests did exactly that.