Hi! I'm Zaakirah (zaa-key-ra) I help you Go from where you are (stuck, stagnant, scared) and where you want to go in your business and life (freedom). I provide Black and Indigenous creatives with strategies that empower them to achieve their goals through branding and storytelling, and marketing.For the last 20 years, I've been storytelling by any creative means necessary; photography, writing, film, and podcasting.I check all the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility boxes.I’m a visually impaired, hard of hearing, cancer survivor, chronically ill Muslim Woman. Knowing your history helps you propel and prepare for your future. Entrepreneurship is ownership, and flexibility is key. Sign up for my semi-weekly newsletter!
It's Okay to Rebuild and Begin Again
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Reader, Apparently, I have a pattern I hadn't named out loud before: I tend to move to a new place roughly every two years. I find myself packing boxes and luggages, moving to a new place, and stepping into a new season of life. I don't intentionally plan it that way, but looking back, it's a rhythm of embracing change, trusting the process, and creating space for what's next, while intentionally choosing a lesser known historically black city and neighborhood that has Black owned businesses that can use support. When the time comes I'll reveal the location, but for now... August is Black Business Month, and it's not just a marketing moment. It is a 200-plus-year throughline of building, rebuilding, and building again — often after wealth that was violently taken, and always in the face of barriers to capital that, honestly, haven't fully gone away. It became a national month in 2004, when engineer Frederick E. Jordan Sr. and historian John William Templeton co-founded the observance — Jordan drew directly from his experience struggling to get financial backing when he launched his firm in San Francisco back in 1969. The goal was never just symbolic support. It was about driving policy that actually affects the millions of Black-owned businesses across the U.S. The story of Black entrepreneurship goes back much further than 2004. Black-owned businesses in the U.S. dating back to after emancipation, the period between 1900 and 1930, is often called the "golden age" of Black business, when segregation, also concentrated Black economic power into thriving self-contained districts. Tulsa Oklahoma's Black Wall Street, a place I lived for two years, is the one you know most. Here we are 100+ years later, and I am rebuilding a media company, not a diversity add-on, not a compliance line item, but something built from the inside out. It's creating conversations around disability, travel, accessibility, storytelling, and belonging. It's using media to amplify voices that are too often overlooked. It's believing that our stories have the power to change perspectives and build stronger communities. Depending on where you're standing right now when it comes to building your own visibility and digital footprint, there are two ways to work with me through the Accessible Content Container, See Your Content Differently: Creator Track — you're building content and an audience, and you want that audience to include the people most content leaves out (and reward you for it). Industry Track — you're further along, and you want to be positioned — and booked — as the person your industry turns to. This is where speaker bureau prep lives. Over the next couple weeks I'm going to show you what this actually looks like. P.P.S join me in Ghana from March 1–10, 2027, for the country's 70th Independence Anniversary celebration. This experience will be more than a vacation—it will be an opportunity to explore history, celebrate culture, connect with the diaspora, and experience Ghana in a meaningful way. Learn more by clicking here.
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Your Branding and Marketing Therapist
Hi! I'm Zaakirah (zaa-key-ra) I help you Go from where you are (stuck, stagnant, scared) and where you want to go in your business and life (freedom). I provide Black and Indigenous creatives with strategies that empower them to achieve their goals through branding and storytelling, and marketing.For the last 20 years, I've been storytelling by any creative means necessary; photography, writing, film, and podcasting.I check all the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility boxes.I’m a visually impaired, hard of hearing, cancer survivor, chronically ill Muslim Woman. Knowing your history helps you propel and prepare for your future. Entrepreneurship is ownership, and flexibility is key. Sign up for my semi-weekly newsletter!
Reader, I'm thinking about the news of actress Hayden Panettiere's passing. I knew of her music from Disney Channel days, most people know her from Bring It On or Nashville. My favorite song of hers is My Hero is You. In May, she released her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning and shared her story publicly of being a child star and dealing with grief. Her passing is a reminder of something I've often spoken of: Heal, but also don't wait to tell the story. Don't wait to create the thing. Don't...
Reader, June this year, I had the opportunity to attend SXSW London 2026. SXSW (South by Southwest) brings together people from across technology, culture, media, music, film, and entrepreneurship to exchange ideas and shape what’s next. While the conference did an excellent job accommodating my hearing and vision dual sensory needs, accessibility is still treated as an add-on in most media, event, and experience design, when it should be the starting point. Being in that space reminded me...
Reader, I don't have a keynote or moderated panel confirmed for the rest of this year, yet. This isn't a gap I'm scrambling to explain away or fill either. I chose it. What I do have is a handful of internal marketing, accessibility, and travel related workshops and focus groups coming up to wrap up the year with Focus Black Oklahoma, World Eye Cancer Hope, Bermuda Travel Experience, and Chocolate Mindfulness Retreat. Good work, meaningful work, work I'm genuinely glad to be doing. But it's a...