The Racial Wealth Gap: Past, Present, and Potential for Change

Your financial decisions have the power to challenge systemic injustice.

This motivating course explores the roots of the racial wealth gap in the U.S. You’ll learn how systemic racism shaped our economy and how it continues to drive inequality today. Through guided learning and a supportive community of women, you’ll examine key policies, uncover hidden structures, and connect history to the present. Then you’ll turn to action! You’ll craft a personal plan to align your resources and financial choices with values of racial justice. Leave with clarity, practical tools, and a peer community to sustain your journey, all for only $250. 

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Course Structure

This course is open to all members of the IFB community and takes place over three live, 2-hour sessions across a 2-month period. You’ll join presentations with expert speakers and engage in both large and small group conversations. The structure is designed to give you the time and space to examine the entrenched systems that created the racial wealth gap and the economic realities that continue to uphold inequality. Throughout the course, the facilitators will be available to support your journey as you work to align your money with your race-equity-focused values.

LIVE MEETING DATES:

  • Wednesday – October 08, 2025
  • Wednesday – October 22, 2025
  • Wednesday – November 05, 2025

LIVE MEETING TIME:

  • 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm PT | 7:00 – 9:00 pm ET

Outcomes

By the end of the course, you will:

  • Understand how systemic racism and economic structures work together to sustain the racial wealth gap;
  • Reflect on the harms (and benefits) of the racial wealth gap on your ancestors, your current life and family;
  • Explore investment strategies and approaches that contribute to closing the racial wealth gap;
  • Develop a concrete action plan to advance your goals for closing the racial wealth gap;
  • Join a values-aligned community to offer and receive support on this journey.

Prerequisites & Level of Effort

  • 1 – 2 hours of work before each session, including short readings and videos, personal journaling, and meeting with your accountability group; 
  • Participants will make action commitments for 2+ alignment categories; 
  • Please bring a willingness to be vulnerable and honest with yourself and others to this course in order to more deeply explore old patterns and adopt new perspectives and ideas.

Course Content

Systemic racism and the racial wealth gap are very complex issues that cannot be understood, grappled with, or thoroughly  addressed in such a short period. As a result, this course is not intended to be a comprehensive solution, but rather a beginning. As a participant, you will learn a variety of frameworks to recognize and reflect on the impacts of systemic racism in your life, your family and the world at large. You will explore how individuals play a role in this system, and how we can get started putting our assets to work to become part of the solution.

  • Meeting 1:

    Systems and Consequences of Economic Racism

    In this opening session, you’ll begin building trust and connection—with one another, with the facilitators, and with the course content. We’ll provide an overview of the history of economic racism in the United States and introduce key frameworks—such as systems change and spheres of influence—to help you understand how race operates across individual, institutional, and structural levels. Together, we’ll examine the U.S. government’s role in either boosting or blocking opportunities for wealth-building, and begin to explore how each of us is shaped by—and participates in—these systems.

    You’ll also connect with your small accountability group and take part in racial affinity group conversations. These spaces are designed to support honest reflection, foster shared understanding, and begin to situate your personal story within the larger economic landscape. This session lays the groundwork for the inquiry, learning, and relationship-building that will unfold over the course.

  • Meeting 2:

    Map Your Assets, Articulate Your Values, Examine Access to Capital

    This session explores the critical role that access to capital plays in shaping the racial wealth gap—at both individual and systemic levels. Guest expert, Chris White, will introduce the mechanics of capital access and examine how race continues to influence who receives funding, credit, and financial opportunity in both personal and professional spheres.

    You’ll be guided through a process to clarify your core values and begin identifying how those values can shape your approach to aligning resources. You’ll also get oriented to the Impact Collective’s key alignment areas and begin mapping your personal action plan.

    To support this work, you’ll come into the session having completed an asset-mapping exercise, deep journaling on your race, class, and gender story, and a meeting with your accountability group to reflect on insights and build momentum. The session also includes time in small group spaces to deepen understanding, share reflections, and exchange support.

  • Meeting 3:

    The Wealth Management Ecosystem, and Action Planning

    In this final session, we turn our attention to the wealth management ecosystem—who operates within it, how it functions, and what it takes to navigate it with clarity, agency, and alignment. Our guest speaker, Anna N’Jie-Konte, will invite you to interrogate your financial ecosystem through a lens of equity and change, helping you consider how your relationships with financial professionals and institutions can support your racial justice goals.

    You’ll also receive guidance on investment and philanthropic strategies that align with justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) principles, and have dedicated time to refine and finalize your personal action plan across two or more alignment categories.

    In preparation for this session, you’ll clarify your wealth priorities, explore JEDI-aligned investing and giving opportunities, and begin thinking critically about your relationships with the people and systems that manage capital. You’ll also meet with your accountability group to reflect on your insights, share resources, and support one another as you prepare to sustain this work beyond the course.

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Guest Speakers

Anna N’Jie-Konte

Guest Speaker

Anna N’Jie-Konte, MBA, CFP ® is the CEO of Poder Wealth Advisors and the host of the Financial Powerhouse Podcast. She helps women navigate financial decisions after divorce, inheritance, or business exits and create an aligned life where their wealth, legacy, and philanthropic plans are rooted in their values.

Having spent her childhood watching the strong women around her live lives dictated by their bank balances, she’s on a mission to rewrite the money stories of women of color.

A proud first-generation American with roots in Puerto Rico and the Gambia, Anna is a 3x winner of Investopedia’s “Top 100 Influential Financial Advisors” and has been named “10 Young Advisors to Watch” by Financial Advisor Magazine. She has been featured in well-known publications such as Bloomberg, CNBC, VICE News, The New York Times, Financial Planning, RIA Intel, Think Advisor, and Next Advisor.

Chris White

Guest Speaker

Chris White, Founder & CEO of ViableMkts, an advisory firm that provides strategic guidance on financial technology and fixed income market structure and BondCliQ, a start-up company that is building an innovative central market system for corporate bonds. He’s spent his career for the past 24 years in financial services primarily focused on market structure, technology and innovation. 

In 2003, Chris was fortunate enough to join the electronic corporate bond trading start-up, MarketAxess. After helping establish the MarketAxess platform, he transitioned to electronic business development for leading investment banks like Barclays, Lehman and Goldman Sachs where Chris was responsible for modernizing their respective credit market making businesses. During his time at Goldman Sachs (2010 – 2015), Chris created the GSessions corporate bond trading platform and led a team to successfully establish the first corporate bond IOI.

Course Creators & Facilitators

Sara Narva

Course Creator and Lead Facilitator

Sara Narva is a dynamic educator and facilitator dedicated to creating environments that foster collaborative, embodied, and impactful learning. She prioritizes integrating theory with the personal experience, transforming challenging content into accessible material. For over 20 years, Sara’s approach to teaching about race, class, and gender ensures that participants absorb new information and apply it in their daily lives.

Ryan Coffey Keaton

Co-Facilitator

Ryan Coffey Keaton is a career long advocate for equity and inclusion with a background in higher education access, secondary school leadership and professional mentorship. As a first-generation college graduate and woman of color, she brings personal insight into the transformational power of structured support, self-reflection and intentional growth. Over the past 25 years,  Ryan has held leadership and advisory roles in both Philadelphia and New York, including college admissions recruiting, college advising, and Assistant Head of School. Quaker school trustee as well as diversity and equity consultant.  Her work is grounded in the belief that meaningful change begins with aligning values, purpose and action.  Drawing from her experience facilitating conversations in schools and community organizations, Ryan creates space for people to reflect, connect, and move toward justice. She lives with her family in the Philadelphia area.

Julia Johannsen.

Julia Johannsen

Course Creator and Founder and Executive Director, The Impact Collective

Julia is an organizer who works to leverage her privilege in the service of racial and economic justice. Driven by her belief that white people of privilege have outsized responsibility to activate their influence and affluence to impact positive change, she founded The Impact Collective, an organization that works to activate wealthy women to reduce the racial wealth gap.

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