Kenya McKnight-Ahad is the founder and CEO of the Black Women’s Wealth Alliance (BWWA), a social enterprise that focuses on improving the economic stability and prosperity of historical black women career and entrepreneurial professionals. Under McKnight-Ahad’s leadership BWWA has served more than 3,500 black women across Minnesota, Washington D.C., Ohio, Houston, and Chicago to date, investing over $340,000 in small capacity grants. A resident of North Minneapolis for 35 years, McKnight-Ahad started her career as a public and charter school educator. Since 2007, she has served in key leadership roles across the economic development sector. Additionally, she has facilitated lending and technical support to more than 400 micro businesses, and led business legal & marketing clinics, as well as a youth entrepreneurship program. McKnight-Ahad was a 2009 candidate for the 5th Ward Minneapolis City Council seat and the first African American in Minnesota to serve as a Met Council appointee to the Transportation Advisory Board. McKnight is a 2007 LISC Fellow, a 2012 Hubert H. Humphrey Policy Fellow, a 2012 Bush Fellow, a 2017 NorthStar Cooperative Fellow, a 2019 Alafia Fellow, and a 2020 Integrated Capital Institute Fellow. In 2019, she was dual honored as a Minneapolis & Saint Paul Business Journal “Top Woman in Business” and a Finance & Commerce “Top Woman in Finance.” And was recently recognized by the Minnesota Black Chambers of Commerce as one of 100 top leading Black women in MN. She is a former MBA student at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, studying global and cooperative economics, and credit union management.
