Before a curious customer asks Kika Keith about the origins of her bright, airy cannabis shop in the heart of Leimert Park, she'll answer, “It's a house that the people built.”

She will tell them how in 2020, Los Angeles politicians failed to live up to their grand promises that California’s legal cannabis industry would help build generational wealth for Black participants as entrepreneurs, thereby righting the racist wrongs of the War on Drugs.

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Instead, Keith, 52, will tell them he's slowly going bankrupt trying to open. GorillaRx Wellness Inc. So she organized other cash-strapped aspiring entrepreneurs of color to form the Social Equality Management and Workers Association, which sued the city and won.

“The community was watching us,” Keith recalls, “and we didn't waver in our truth.”

At that moment, she realized that their “truth” had given her a power that has since grown into a real influence.

It is no exaggeration to say that Keith is California's leading expert and consultant on the small but growing “cannabis equality” movement.

She loves beanies and red lipstick, and is soft-spoken yet blunt.

She is frequently tapped by cities and counties looking to launch or revise cannabis parity programs, and at the state level, lawmakers are heeding her advice as they increasingly seek to address gaps and loopholes in the law that make it harder for entrepreneurs of color to do business.

Keith also runs Gorilla University, a workforce development center and business incubator.

“I wanted to be someone who actually made a difference, but I couldn't see that happening,” she said.

Her personal experiences — growing up in South Los Angeles during the drug war, spending time in homeless shelters with her daughters and then becoming the first Black woman to open a cannabis shop in Los Angeles — set her apart in a troubled industry plagued by corruption, violence and greed.

Indeed, without her advocacy, fairness in business would likely have remained just talk.

Keith acknowledged that one morning in March 2023, when he was complaining about having to travel to Sacramento to testify at the Capitol.

“Is it really my responsibility to educate them?” she said of the lawmakers, then paused.

“But if you don't…”

Keith didn't finish the sentence, she already knew the answer.