Our story began in 2017 through Zaria’s Milk Homemade Lactation Cookies, a business founded by Brianna’s mother and Zaria’s grandmother. Brianna joined as Vice President of Community Engagement, helping connect its work to mothers and families throughout the community.

Connie was one of Zaria’s Milk’s early customers, discovering the cookies during her own breastfeeding journey. Later, when Zaria’s Milk conducted a consumer science focus group to better understand how the cookies supported milk production, Connie participated—and Brianna and Connie’s paths crossed again.

Soon, they kept crossing.

Brianna was growing the community presence of Zaria’s Milk. Connie was building Nurturing Generations. Both were Black women working in maternal and infant health, bringing professional expertise alongside their lived experiences as mothers navigating systems that were not always designed with them in mind.

They began showing up at vendor fairs together, entering the same professional and community spaces, exchanging resources and opportunities, and doing something that became a hallmark of their relationship: making sure the other woman’s name was mentioned when she wasn’t in the room.

Eventually, they started calling themselves “business besties.” Somewhere along the way, business besties became sister friends.

As their families grew, so did their work—and their understanding of what families needed. Across public health, nursing, lactation, childbirth education, wellness, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and community engagement, they kept seeing the same thing: Black women were being asked to navigate systems that had never truly placed their well-being at the center. In maternal health, the consequences felt especially urgent.

When Brianna founded Be Well Women’s Wellness Collective, Connie remained a trusted collaborator, resource, and friend. Then came a conversation that changed what they imagined was possible.

Brianna asked: What if we created a foundation that could expand access to the culturally aligned care and support we’ve spent years providing and advocating for?

Connie’s response was simple: “I want to do it, too.” From that shared yes, Be Well Foundation was born.

Be Well Foundation is more than another organization. It represents years of learning, serving, raising families, navigating systems, building relationships, sharing resources—and imagining something better. Because eventually, the question became:

If the systems our communities need do not yet exist in the ways they should, who better to help build them?

Today, Brianna and Connie are bringing together their professional expertise, lived experience, relationships, and collective network to create trusted, community-led spaces where Black mothers and families receive culturally aligned support, wellness education, and collective care throughout pregnancy, postpartum, and beyond.

What began with lactation cookies and a new customer became friendship. Friendship became partnership. And partnership became a commitment to building better conditions for Black mothers, families, and the practitioners who care for them.

We are Brianna and Connie—business besties, sister friends, mothers, practitioners, entrepreneurs, and co-founders of Be Well Foundation. And we are building what we know is possible when Black women have the care, community, resources, and support to truly be well.

Supporting Black Mothers. Sustaining Black Care.