Our Mission

We are a global collective and circular economy where Black women become fully resourced through community, capital, and collaboration.

What stands between Black women and their deferred dreams is rarely a lack of vision.

It is a lack of conditions.

We didn't build Sankofa because there was nothing. We built it because what existed wasn't built for us.

Black women are the most educated demographic in the United States and the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs globally. We craft narratives that reshape culture, create work that defines movements, and lead in our households, our organizations, and our communities.

And yet the infrastructure to support that leadership has never been built at the scale it deserves.

Not by the system. Not by the girl boss industrial complex. Not by the endless stream of courses, masterminds, and platforms that profit from the gap without closing it.

Sankofa exists to close it.

We are not just building a platform. We are building the conditions for Black women to succeed.

Our Philosophy

The integrity of Sankofa lives in two places — in the outcomes we produce and in the culture we maintain while producing them.
We do not build excellence at the cost of how we treat each other, our partners, or the women we serve.
Pace is a value here. We slow down when something deserves care. We do not let urgency become an excuse for cutting corners on what matters. What we are building must be able to hold us as much as we hold it.
The Sankofa bird is an Adinkra symbol from the Akan people of Ghana — a bird in full flight, head turned back, carrying a pearl in its mouth. It means: what was left behind is worth returning for.
It is not about living in the past. It is about recognizing that something precious was interrupted, and choosing to reclaim it as you move forward.
At Sankofa Impact Collective, that is not just our name. It is our operating principle. Who were we before we were interrupted? That question shapes everything we build.
We do not treat ancestral wisdom as decoration or nostalgia. We treat it as infrastructure.
The knowledge systems, ways of relating, and models of interdependence that Black women across the diaspora carry are not relics — they are blueprints.
Ubuntu. The circular economy. The village. The supper table. These are not metaphors. They are architectures for how communities thrive.
Sankofa is built on the premise that going back to reclaim those ways of operating is not a retreat from the future. It is the fastest path to it.

Community-made. Community-funded. Community-owned.

Sankofa is a global collective and circular economy where Black women stop building alone and become fully resourced through community, capital, and collaboration.

We could have built Sankofa as a for-profit. We chose not to and that choice was intentional.

As a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, every dollar we generate goes back into the community that built it — into more seed grants, more scholarships, and deeper programming.

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Meet Our Founders

The Sankofa Impact Collective is led by co-founders Sienna J. Brown and Dr. Erin Conner, supported by a Board of Directors with expertise spanning nonprofit governance, creative arts, technology, diaspora organizing, entrepreneurship, wellness, and social impact.

Dr. Erin Conner

Co-Founder & Director of Operations and Finance

Erin has spent her career building equity-centered systems across nonprofit and corporate sectors, bringing expertise in nonprofit operations, fundraising, and strategic consulting with Fortune 100/500 companies on organizational transformation.

Sienna J. Brown

Co-Founder & Director of Brand and Community

Sienna brings a systems-level approach to visionary strategy, shaped by her career designing values-driven brand and community ecosystems and her deep experience in leadership development, community-led growth, and global impact.