Kenya McKnight-Ahad’s current business venture, The ZaRah, is not only the first spa and food hall on Minneapolis’ Northside — it’s an expression of what wellness looks like through a Black feminine lens, a destination space for leaders and business owners to support each other and access healing through education, wellness, beauty, and food.
Your Story — Tell us about your journey to get here: How did you get your start? How long have you been in business?
I have worked in community for over 20 years. I grew up on the Northside and I’m originally from Kankakee, Illinois. My first official job was at the Cookie Cart—baking and selling cookies on West Broadway. I was a teacher and youth worker, working with young, primarily Black, girls. In the later part of my career, I worked as a racial equity strategist and was very involved in regional planning and policy and financial investments.
I began to learn a lot about Black people, money, wealth, and economics. I came up with this idea that the best way to position us for a future, is by leveraging our greatest asset, which is Black women—to position them strongly would help us tremendously.
I organized about 20 of my family, friends, colleagues, and folks from the community, and we began mapping out asking, “what do we think we need to do?”
We knew national stuff but nothing locally around the status of Black women. I partnered with Cura, the University of Minnesota’s research arm and developed Minnesota’s first report on the economic status of Black women. We saw that Black women were leading new business in Minnesota but didn’t have support.
So we got to it. We changed our name from Black Women’s Business Alliance to the Black Women’s Wealth Alliance (BWWA) because we realized wealth was the bigger focus.
That was in 2016. Nine years later, we’ve served well over 4,500 women. We’ve invested over $2 million worth of small grants. We’ve helped with over $1,000,000,000 worth of lending. We’ve been leaders in this space of Black women.
The ZaRah was an evolution, the next step of BWWA, it offers a pathway to a continuum — a capacity builder of Black women that will help us heal more.
Your Inspiration — Who or what’s inspired you to keep moving forward?
My great grandmother, Memphis Tucker was an entrepreneur, she was the neighborhood candy store lady. She was involved in community and raised four generations of her family, taking care of everybody to her best ability. And I was always inspired by my auntie as a little girl.
And then we had Oprah and Janet Jackson. I carried those four women a lot through my life.
Today, it’s people like Dorothy Bridges, DeAnna Cummings, Tonya Allen, Stella Whitney-West. It’s the way they go at life, how they present themselves. They’ve all taken nontraditional paths to get to where they are. I greatly admire that.
Your Purpose — Why do you do what you do? What makes it
meaningful to you?
It’s a question that I have to keep answering because purpose is more than one thing.
I was born to be an inspirational leader who creates from the core of the pain, the hurt, the struggle. One who can help shine a light from the darkest places — and the voice and inspiration to make it all possible.
My work is also about expressing that greatness does exist, but we need to create a pathway to not only keep facilitating it, but helps sustain it over time, and to normalize it as something that we all can have access to. Because we’re not short on ideas, or creativity, or aspiration, sometimes we’re just short on hope and knowing where to start and where to go. And so I’m here not to solve the problem, but to be an added value to the future that we all want, need, and gotta have.
Your Motivation — Within the work you do and the experiences you cultivate, what matters to you most?
That we experience Black excellence through wellness.
I’m doing something with ZaRah that is game changing. I’m providing a space that highlights us as a culture that embraces wellness through self-care — from our lashes to our nails to our hair, to our body.
I’m building what I would call a small, world-class destination space on the Northside that allows people to see us as a resource, locally, nationally, and globally. We’re building Northside’s first food hall and the first holistic wellness complex. Not only do we need it, we want it.
I think the ZaRah is destined for my ancestors. It’s a direction of our future. We deserve to have nice public amenities that serve our community, not just in the poverty struggle, but in prosperity and wellness.
Your goal — What’s next?
As it relates to The ZaRah, my goal is to build it first. And I want to replicate this and have at least five of them across Minnesota.
In the next decade or so, I want to turn these centers over to co-ownership with other Black women. So that it’s a collective asset that we all own — it’s not just building Kenya’s wealth, its building our collective.
I want to get to a place where I can tell my story more to help inspire other people. Because real success is about more of US doing it. I have to keep inspiring other people to be who they are and to do the work that they’re called to do — to help shift our world and our communities.
Final thoughts
KNOCK inc. is honored to collaborate with McKnight-Ahad on ZaRah’s branding and communication strategy. Click here to learn more and support the development of the ZaRah.