As a mother of three children and owner of three businesses, Felicia Harris-Williams, EDU '17, is the ultimate mompreneur. While juggling her event production company and youth mentorship nonprofit, a health scare led her to create a tea business to inspire women to take control of their wellness with natural remedies.
AAfter receiving her Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University, Felicia Harris-Williams, EDU '17, knew she wanted to pursue graduate studies but wanted to establish a long-term career before making the financial investment. Her path led to a career in fundraising and special events with the Urban Affairs Coalition for several years. While there, she also started her first two businesses, Influencing Action Movement, a mentor program connecting high school students with young professionals, and HiTouch Enterprises, an event production and marketing firm. When she felt ready to pursue full-time entrepreneurship and grow her nonprofit, she looked to the Temple University master's program in adult organizational development for the education she needed.
"I was able to use the knowledge from the School of Education to better recruit and train mentors for my nonprofit. Also, learning to develop systems is crucial to my work as an event producer, so the program was a two-for-one. I did a lot of research, but Temple was the best. I met with extremely welcoming professors ahead of time, it was flexible for me as someone juggling a lot of things, and I could take classes at the Center City campus, which was close enough to walk from work to class. It was a great fit," says Harris-Williams.
During this time, Harris-Williams discovered that she had a heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome and needed to have emergency surgery. She worked with understanding professors to ensure she wouldn't fall behind and finished her program with a healthy heart and a 3.8 GPA. However, immediately following surgery, she began having painful indigestion and heartburn. One of her doctors recommended a combination of medicines, but another recommended tea infused with raw ginger root. Harris-Williams then became an avid tea drinker and added raw ginger to everything, alleviating her symptoms and inspiring her company, Gynger Tea House (Gyngertea).
"My tea is for everyone but curated with women, especially Black women, in mind. Given my history, I should have been assessed for heart disease much earlier. Unfortunately, racial health disparities are still prevalent. It was also a Black doctor who recommended alternative treatments. I want to be that same person for other Black women and tell my story through my brand," says Harris-Williams.
The idea for Gyngertea came not even a year after her heart surgery, but a trip to tea houses in Italy for her 30th birthday cemented her desire to bring it to life. Harris-Williams then moved forward with getting a logo, LLC and website and spent over a year and a half sampling teas from different farms and wholesalers. When the pandemic happened, both her event and mentoring businesses were affected, giving her the time and opportunity to commit to Gyngertea. "Every cabinet in the house was chockful of tea. My husband sat me down and said, 'Listen, events are on pause, mentoring is virtual, and you have sampled enough. Let's get started!' And we did on July 1, 2020," she says.
Harris-Williams first took a reseller route, choosing tea blends from Canada, Australia and India and finding a facility to package and brand her teas. Since then, she has transitioned into crafting her own recipes and moved into a bigger house with kitchen space to create small-batch blends. She continues using her business and social media presence (@theblacktealover) to encourage women to advocate for their health and wellness and explore natural remedies. She even makes custom tea blends, especially for women, to aid them during their monthly cycle, postpartum, menopause and lactation. Gyngertea also offers an array of teas for anyone seeking comfort, healing or simply a cup full of goodness, along with tea-infused candles, body products and gift sets perfect for the holidays.
In addition to online retail, Gyngertea currently does pop-ups at events and tea tastings with retailers and organizations, such as Temple Women's Network's Fifth Annual Sunday Tea, but its future is full of opportunity. Harris-Williams is now in an incubator program with the Department of Commerce of Philadelphia to launch a tea house and streamline the packaging process. Her long-term goal is to be a national brand with event space and experiences to offer. She hopes to incorporate other therapeutic activities and classes like candle making, tea blending, yoga, painting and other arts and music entertainment.
"Temple taught me to create systems that humans can operate in and how individuals think so I could train people to better work inside those systems. I've applied that to HiTouch Enterprises, which turned out to be successful, so I'm looking forward to applying it to Gyngertea and watching it flourish too. This is a pivotal moment for Gyngertea, so I hope that someone reading this notices that I said what I was going to do and, a year from now, see me doing it," says Harris-Williams.