By Kenzie Love
Black Women Professional Co-operative (BWP Co-op) is a multi-stakeholder co-op that aims to empower women professionals and entrepreneurs to operationalize their businesses and scale up products and services to mainstream local channels and international markets. Founded in March 2020 by ten Black women professionals, the Co-op was formally incorporated in 2024.
Ada Iwenofu, the Co-op’s Director of Business Operations, says the multi-stakeholder model was a logical fit for the founders’ mission of building resilient, healthy and thriving communities.
“The reason why we wanted to do this was to create intergenerational wealth within our communities,” she says. “And the best way to do that was to come together in solidarity and cooperation to ensure that that happens.”
The Co-op’s members encompass a wide range of producers and service providers. The common factor, Iwenofu says, is the recognition that the whole they’ve created is greater than the sum of its parts. Guided by principles including the power of community and people-centricity and partnerships towards shared prosperity, the Co-op offers access to resources, professional development, business opportunities, and financial benefits, things that would be harder to obtain on one’s own.
“Usually in our community when you come together, you achieve more,” Iwenofu observes.
Iwenofu acknowledges that the Co-op model has its challenges as well, among them a more complex decision-making process.
“Every decision we have to make, everybody has to align, there has to be a consensus,” she says. “So I find that challenging as opposed to where if I alone have to make a decision, I just make the decision.”
Despite the fact that consensus decision making sometimes slows things down, Iwenofu believes the shared knowledge and experience BWP Co-op’s members benefit from makes the model worth it.
“It can be challenging trying to do it on your own,” she says. “But when you have other people doing something similar and they can support you, especially when you’re starting up, that support is good.”
BWP Co-op has set some goals for the future, such as continuing to build its online marketplace, welcoming more members, and purchasing a commercial kitchen for its members in the food industry to use. Its members envision a world of shared prosperity, equity and dignity, where Black women work together in solidarity to increase economic opportunities and transform their communities through cooperative economics.