'It's about the future:" North Minneapolis entrepreneur works to help Black women build wealth

CATHY WURZER: Consider this. In 2019, the median wealth of Black households in the US was $24,100 compared with $189,100 for white households. There are a lot of factors fueling this gap, including Black women who participate in the workforce at much higher rates than most other women, but Black women currently make 15% less money than white women and 40% less than white men for doing the same work.

Kenya McKnight-Ahad has committed her life to helping Black Minnesota women build and maintain wealth. She's the founder of the Black Women's Wealth Alliance, based in North Minneapolis. Kenya, thank you for joining us. By the way, can you pronounce your name for me?

KENYA MCKNIGHT-AHAD: Yes. Kenya McKnight-Ahad. You pronounced it correctly.

CATHY WURZER: Thank you so much. Thank you for being here.

KENYA MCKNIGHT-AHAD: Thanks for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Let's be clear. There is a pay gap between all women and white men, but what is the wealth gap? What is that about? How does it happen?

KENYA MCKNIGHT-AHAD: Well, we know that this dates back to enslavement and the benefit that white Americans had and having over 200 years of building wealth ahead of African-Americans, historical Black people, and on the backs of us, right? We know that. And so you have this gap that continues to increase and really hadn't changed much since the 1940s. I think we probably have about maybe a 10% increase since then.

So this gap is about assets, right? It is about land. It is about and the stock market. It is about pay and wage. It is about business revenue and growth and markets and that African-Americans are not able to pass through generations of our families, of our communities at the same pace and skill as white communities despite our efforts and heavy participation in the workforce and business.

CATHY WURZER: Paint us a picture. What are Black women up against in terms of building and maintaining wealth here in Minnesota?

KENYA MCKNIGHT-AHAD: Well, when you have nearly 80% of Black women, despite our marital status-- and I am talking more specifically about what I call historical Black women that are, really, non-immigrant. Black women, although they certainly have a set of challenges as well, we just have our own unique experience because we're starting from this historical despair of this land and the United States, given the history we have with the United States and white America. So in that, when you have nearly 80% of us being the primary breadwinners of our households despite our marital status, which is not equally met, with pay, as you mentioned early on, enough economic opportunity to provide for yourself, and when you have over 50% of Black African-American children starting their lives in poverty, then you have a whole what I call economic tsunami and that Black women are climbing up this difficult hill without real access to growing their income in significant ways that would help them stabilize their households and their families.

Because we are contributors, and we pretty much influence the money in our community at least by 60%, despite, again, marital status. When you have that and when you also have mounting credit challenges and not meeting the financial criteria of character spending and income that banks require for capital for your businesses, there's so many thresholds that we're trying to meet, but meeting these requirements require money to pay for debt, to manage debt, and to establish assets in order to enter the financial system at a level that would really help you begin to build your company, one, and grow wealth.

CATHY WURZER: So you provide wealth education, right? What do most folks need to know about building wealth for themselves, especially Black women?

KENYA MCKNIGHT-AHAD: I think it all starts with a vision. One. it's really understanding, what does your financial future look like to you? You have to paint that picture. Then I think financial planning is really important, financial planning as well as advising, to really understand the different tools and strategies that are available.

There's retirement accounts. There's having the proper insurance. There's also, definitely, budgeting, managing, looking at what your current income is but not being constrained by them. Managing your debt is important, and really pacing yourself to scale up to the level you need to be at to build the wealth that you imagine for yourself and connecting with those people who are smart in those areas to help you get into that next position for yourself.

But ultimately, it starts with the vision and understand that wealth is the long game, and it's not about the now. It's about the future and investments that we need to make to secure our children our families, our community in the long term.

CATHY WURZER: So I know a big part of your job is supporting businesses owned by Black women that are just getting started, startups. Who are you working with right now that you're excited about?

KENYA MCKNIGHT-AHAD: Yeah. We support all stages of businesses. We tend to work a lot with startups and mid-stage. I'm working with PASH 23, Heaven on Earth. I work with [INAUDIBLE], Rocky Robbins. We work with so many different businesses. I'm trying to think of Dominique's business name. Trucking companies, beauty companies, health and wellness. There's a neuro-holistic spa and wellness.

There's about 12 businesses that are in our building right now that we're working with. So pardon me for not remembering everybody off the top.

CATHY WURZER: It's OK. That's a number of businesses. And I'm wondering, so are you helping them just navigate? Which can be a very rocky beginning when you're starting up and especially as you outlined those barriers at the beginning of our conversation. How are you helping these women jump those barriers?

KENYA MCKNIGHT-AHAD: Yeah. I would just say that the Black Women's Wealth Alliance, we provide four levels of service, and that's wealth education, business support services. We have a grant program where we do financial assistance, and then now we own a building. So we provide them with affordable space.

We think it's essential that businesses that have storefronts or desire them have an affordable way to start or operate, which is important. Because your overhead can take up all your revenue. So that's an important step. Two, we really focus on leadership and strategy. That's an important element in business that isn't really taught. You learn it.

I've been an entrepreneur for a lot of years. So leadership and strategy and having vision and being very clear about your steps and aligning your business with market opportunities as part of how you drive revenue, how you're going to grow some revenue. Because moving more out of the passion phase of it and looking really at strategic business is some things we work with these women on. We connect them to the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem, because, certainly, we don't do everything.

There's a lot of great programs out there like Neon, NDC, Women's Venture, African Development Center. And so we're partners with all those folks, or we work with them or know of them in different ways. And our job is really to get our folks connected to them so that we're able to maximize the real needs they have, which is deeper than what we can provide, which is that jump-start with that partner.

We work with them. We navigate. But what they ultimately also need as central to their success is being able to expand their social capital. And so getting them connected to the broader ecosystem maximizes opportunities for them to not only know people, but to connect to contracting. There's a lot of contracting opportunities that have come up for the business owners we work with by getting them to those broader folks-- Bremer Bank, US Bank-- and getting them connected to systems but also helping them understand these systems, how to walk with these systems, how to build relationships in these systems, and also how to position themselves to be successful, which is the strategy and leadership that entrepreneurs have to have when you're not here, but being very clear about your business, your business vision and your bottom line, and most of all, how to take care of yourself as an entrepreneur because if you're not well, if you're not stable, then your business cannot be.

CATHY WURZER: That's exactly right. Kenya, good work. Thank you so much.

KENYA MCKNIGHT-AHAD: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Kenya McKnight-Ahad is founder of the Black Women's Wealth Alliance, based in North Minneapolis.