Alexander Sinora, co-founder of the Black Wealth Club, a not-for-profit organization focused on supporting Black leaders across Canada. 

Black communities in Canada have long faced systemic and structural hurdles in creating and sustaining wealth. Income inequality, discriminatory housing policies and weak support structures are among the reasons why these communities continue to earn much less than their white counterparts. Over time, this has limited the ability of Black professionals to thrive and thwarted the intergenerational transfer of wealth.

Closing those income and opportunity gaps is central to the work of the Black Wealth Club (BWC), a new program created to help Black communities build and reinvest wealth across the country. Alexander Sinora and Paul Desmarais III founded the club shortly after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis in June 2020. As corporations rushed to show their support on social media, Sinora, a Montreal-based consultant at McKinsey & Company, wanted to see these corporate actors put in actual time and capital to create change. 

His friend connected him to Paul Desmarais III, the chairman and CEO of Sagard, a Canadian alternative asset manager. Like Sinora, Desmarais III was interested in finding concrete ways to support Black business leaders to thrive – and Sinora was interested in how he could draw from his network to access information, networks and capital for his community. They came up with the idea for BWC in their first conversation.

In 2021, BWC launched its first program. It’s led by the founding steering committee who were chosen based on their diverse backgrounds. The year-long program selects 50 Black leaders, on an application basis, to join workshops and networks focused on supporting their professional growth and development by nurturing their leadership skills and business acumen. The program focuses on four key themes: building wealth in its various forms, cultivating leadership, investing, and creating opportunities for collaboration. BWC hosts guest speakers once a month who speak to these themes, and participants are matched with a mentor based on their shared interests to help participants navigate professional challenges and achieve their goals throughout the process. At the end of the program, participants have the opportunity to join one of four BWC sub-committees to share the support they receive: University Outreach, Financing, Mentorship, or Philanthropy. Each participant can opt into these groups to give back to their community through, for example, becoming mentors and providing counselling services to Black communities. The idea is to keep the good going.

A Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) report from 2019 found that the average income for Black people in Canada is $12,000 less than for white people. Comparing the average income between genders, the gap is even worse: white men make $25,000 more than Black women. These discrepancies are aggravated by distrust of banks among members of the Black community and discrimination in the labour market, among other reasons.

During this year’s Black Philanthropy Month, Future of Good sat down with co-founder Sinora on how BWC is mobilizing Black leaders to address these discrepancies, defining wealth on its own terms and focusing on giving back as they gear up to welcome applications for their second cohort in the fall.

This conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Katrya Bolger:  The Black Wealth Club was created shortly after George Floyd was murdered in the United States and corporations were rushing to show support on social media. How did the Black Wealth Club emerge out of this context, and how did you see it as responding to the gaps in support for Black leaders?

Alexander Sinora: When the George Floyd incident happened, I was starting to get involved in corporate spaces. One of the realities that came to me was that within those kinds of spaces, there’s not a lot of people that look like me… I asked myself, “What is missing to bridge that gap? How do I bring different kinds of networks to people that look like myself across Canada? How do I equip people who look like myself with the right skills and enable them to not only thrive but to build wealth in their own way?” It could be from a financial standpoint, a social capital standpoint, an arts and culture standpoint. That’s where the BWC emerged, and where I felt I had the opportunity to make the most impact with the network I had and the realities that I was experiencing at that time.

Katrya Bolger: The Black Wealth Club considers ‘wealth’ a multi-dimensional concept – social, economic and physical. How do you define wealth, and how do you try to uphold that definition in BWC’s work?

Wealth is having the freedom of impacting, whether it’s through a specific initiative or if it’s a specific passion you have. It’s self-determination and allowing yourself to be impactful based on whatever you want to achieve, and the ability to impact and transform – to create not only for ourselves but for others, regardless of what space interests you. Social capital, for example, is not about how many people you know, but how many people you’ve impacted. This is what we’re trying to do: enabling people to have a great impact and wealth comes out of it.

Katrya Bolger: BWC sees access to information and networking as important for Black communities in their work. How do you facilitate this access concretely?

Alexander Sinora: Every year, we recruit 50 young leaders across Canada. The first thing we really care about is the composition of the cohort, making sure we always have 50 percent from different genders and sexual orientations. We make sure that first and foremost, we have a network within our cohort. The thing about the Black community is that we’re not a monolith…In Montreal, we have a lot of people from Haiti. But we do not have a lot of Somalians, which has a bigger community in Ontario. So within ourselves, we try to make sure we have different kinds of people to access. This is the first step. The second step is we have calls during every month where we invite different kinds of leaders, from the United States or Canada, to talk to us. That enables us to learn from different kinds of people but also to be together as a group. After those calls, we debrief and discuss what’s happened. This is how we build a sense of community. We also have a mentorship community where every leader who joins our cohort can join and select a mentor from incredible professionals, entrepreneurs, innovators and changemakers…[Canadian business leader] Bertrand Cesvet, for example, is one of our ultimate mentors. He helped multiple cohort members to reorient their careers and find sponsorship opportunities. Dr. Jihane Cherkaoui has also been incredible to us. She mentors one of our medical students and opened a multitude of doors for her, including offering access to the latest research in a field that interests her mentee. She also been key for the recruitment of doctors interested in becoming mentors.

Katrya Bolger: Co-creation of ideas and initiatives is clearly important to BWC too. Why is this so central in your work and the greater mission of the club?

Alexander Sinora: In our spaces, what often happens is you get to your first incredible position, work at the firm you want to work with, and it’s easy to forget to actually give back and co-create different initiatives. The way the club [BWC] is made, you receive a lot. You receive mentorship, you receive a lot of different knowledge. But the second mission is to create initiatives where all the people can spend their time and give back to others too. This is why I think it’s really important. Regardless of where you end up, professionally or in your personal life, being able to remain creative and build giving back as a habit – not as an afterthought – is something that we’re trying to develop.

Katrya Bolger: What would you say to those who suggest that BWC perpetuates an ‘elitist’ approach by leaning on powerful networks?

Alexander Sinora: When you look at anything that’s been built, it’s been by knowing and working with other people. The reality is, if you want to create something that’s lasting, that has the most impact possible, you need to work on getting to know the right people and making sure, more importantly, those people know you…The way that you get there is making sure you provide value to other people, and you work with different kinds of people.

Katrya Bolger: Based on your experience with BWC, how can social purpose organizations be more mindful of issues relating to wealth and equity in their work, and how can they better support Black leaders within their organizations?

Alexander Sinora: One of the most important things is making sure that those topics are not just initiatives or programs but a constant key performance indicator in their governance, like in their board meetings. They need to talk about this every quarter. They need to make sure it’s not just an afterthought but that it’s one of the most important aspects [of their work]. …The second thing is we should not be scared to partner with people that they think are too outside of their areas to really care about – to be able to go to different spaces and partner with different people and institutions. That is really important. It cannot happen by itself. And lastly, I think that when we talk about equity and wealth, I think that we should have conversations that allow people to really feel included and respected – and having safe spaces to talk about it. This is a really touchy subject, but I don’t think you can solve anything you don’t want to talk about.

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