Source: Courtesy of Jamila Wright
Jamila Wright had just returned home from her tea shop when she got on the phone. It was a Tuesday in Bed-Stuy, the historic Brooklyn neighborhood where her business, Brooklyn Tea, resides. Since opening in 2019, the beloved neighborhood tea house, co-founded by Jamila and her husband Alfonso “Ali” Wright, has been on quite a journey, riding out the global pandemic and surviving (or rather, thriving) to tell the tale. Wright credits a large part of their success story to the vast, yet tight-knit, network made up of her alma mater Spelman College and the broader community of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Today, Brooklyn Tea, proudly born and brewed in Bed-Stuy has grown beyond the borough and is now available nationwide in major retailers including Target and Wegmans. This year, the brand launched Brooklyn Tea & Market in New York’s JFK Airport, becoming the first Black-owned beverage brand to operate in a U.S. airport.
The road hasn’t been easy, but it’s brought new friendships, opportunities, and a deeper sense of community. MadameNoire caught up with Wright to discuss the power of her HBCU network, navigating the pandemic, and the beauty of bringing people together.
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Source: Courtesy of Jamila WrightBrooklyn Tea
After graduating from Spelman College with a degree in English, “I went straight to Brooklyn,” said the Atlanta native. “My older Spelman sister told me about a program she had done, and opened the door and walked me through.” It was an opportunity to teach, which soon became a calling. “I fell in love with education,” said Wright, who went on to earn her master’s degree in early childhood education at Hunter College. From teaching in the classroom, she advanced to Dean of Students. “Teaching is where I became more informed and skilled around how to actively create community and build culture,” she reflected.
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Wright’s gift for bringing people together proved just as valuable in entrepreneurship. “That transferred into Brooklyn Tea,” she continued. “That heartbeat, my husband would say, comes from my teaching background, comes from our HBCU backgrounds, of wanting everyone to feel not only like they belong but like it’s a part of who they are too.”
For Wright, her journey from the classroom to the tea shop came together with purpose. “There’s a very clear throughline for me,” she affirmed. One chapter flowed into the next. The Wrights, and the business, stayed close to home. “I’m a ten-minute walk from my first school. My first two staff members were students that I taught, who then wanted to go on to HBCUs,” she said. “They saw that kinship, how people came into the shop to support us because we were HBCU grads.” (Her husband Alfonso graduated from Hampton University.)
Source: Courtesy of Jamila WrightHBCU Legacy
There’s real power in being connected to the HBCU legacy, Wright emphasized. “There is a surgical precision to how we open doors for each other,” she said. “So many opportunities have come from not only a Spelmanite, not only a Morehouse alum, but from the HBCU community.”
From being gifted $5,000 in ad spend to securing a major wholesale account with Google, Wright credits the HBCU ecosystem with bringing these opportunities to light. “We all feel the interconnectedness,” she said. “We know what it means to be counted out and we damn for sure aren’t doing it to each other.” As alumni themselves, the husband-and-wife duo uplifts the next generation with an annual scholarship for high school grads headed to HBCUs.
It was this very community that helped the business stay afloat during the global pandemic. Brooklyn Tea opened in Bed-Stuy in 2019, with COVID-19 just around the corner. Then the shutdown happened. “I thought I was being very casual about how much of a struggle it was, but apparently the fear was written on my face,” said Wright.
In that moment, the community banded together and made sure the business weathered the storm. “The Spelman and Morehouse community collectively paid our rent for two months,” Wright said. But even amid the hardship, there were unexpected wins. Brooklyn Tea was shouted out by Shonda Rhimes and was featured on Beyoncé’s Black Parade Black-owned business directory — “all in a span of a week!” Wright recalled.
With new orders rushing in, they got a crash course in scaling the business. “We had no idea any of these things were coming our way. We were building in real time,” Wright said. “But as we kept going, we got better at everything.”
Kinship
Raised in West Indian families where tea is a way of life — a love language — the Wrights bring that same cultural reverence to their product, prioritizing quality and ethical practices while offering distinctive blends like Cream Earl Grey, Kyoto Cherry Rose Sencha, and Vanilla Rooibos.
Seven years since its grand opening, Brooklyn Tea has become a neighborhood fixture, welcoming tea lovers from the block and beyond. Wright enjoys seeing friendships blossom inside her tea shop. “You came for one thing and left with something far greater than the product or service itself. As an entrepreneur, that’s the goal,” she said. From hosting mixers and tastings, to live music and screenings, Brooklyn Tea keeps the community coming together.
Source: Courtesy of Jamila Wright
One event that she cherishes to this day was a 2022 screening of The 1619 Project with author and journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. Wright had reached out about doing an event together, and Hannah-Jones responded with an immediate yes. “She felt a kinship to us,” Wright said. “She felt moved to collaborate with us. We were on the same mission which was to give back to our people. And for that reason alone, she showed up, having never met us, and did this whole event.”
Ecosystem
One thing Wright treasures most about entrepreneurship is the network of people she’s able to grow alongside, including fellow HBCU grads. “I love the relationships that I get to cultivate with other business owners,” Wright said. “It’s a tall order to ask your friends to understand the complexities of what you’re going through. So to be able to have this community where you get to truth-tell and commiserate, and plot and plan in a way that makes you feel humanized — there’s really nothing like it.”
“It’s this ecosystem that is both social and financial,” Wright added. “We celebrate each other and go to each other’s events, we share where we get our cups from.” It’s impossible to name just a few, she said: Keishon Warren from Brooklyn Blend, Nicole Nicholas from Aunts et Uncles, Melissa Butler from The Lip Bar, Renae Bluitt from She Did That. “There are so many. I mean, the list really does go on.”
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