Keecha Harris and Associates (KHA)

Background

Keecha Harris and Associates is a consulting firm that works with nonprofit and for-profit organizations to help them implement diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles in their management structures.  ^{2  4} KHA says clients have hired it “to facilitate power-differentiated stakeholders in processes framed to redress racial inequities” and assist with “strategy development that centers racial equity in a politically hostile environment.” ⁵

KHA is a so-called B Corporation, a designation awarded by the nonprofit B Lab that certifies for-profit companies as having a commitment to left-of-center environmentalist; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activism; and DEI ideologies alongside profit.  ²

Leadership

Keecha Harris is the founder and as of 2025 was the president and CEO of the firm, which is based in Birmingham, Alabama. ⁶ She is a registered dietitian and public health professional by education, having received a doctorate in public health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. ¹

Harris is a board member of the Mary Reynolds Babckock Foundation, which was founded by the heiress to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune in 1953. ⁷ She is also a former board chair of the left-of-center grantmaker Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation. ¹

After the 2024 election of President Donald Trump, Harris co-authored a column in Nonprofit Quarterly that framed the election in purely racial terms: “The 2024 presidential election presented the nation with a pivotal question: Are we going to choose democracy or Whiteness? The nation chose Whiteness. Indeed, voters chose to elect the most extreme version of Whiteness, a demonstration of how far many people are willing to go to preserve White supremacy.” ⁸

In 2020, former KHA deputy director for strategy and culture Jasmine N. Hall Ratliff became a board member of the Windward Fund, an environmentalist fiscal sponsor organization and member of the network of “dark money” organizations controlled by philanthropic consultancy Arabella Advisors. ⁹

Clients

Keecha Harris and Associates has worked with some of the largest and most influential grant-making foundations in the United States to advance left-wing DEI principles. Its past client list includes the Schmidt Family Foundation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ChangeLab Solutions, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.  ¹

On her podcast, founder Keecha Harris has also referenced working with clients including AARP, Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Wells Fargo Bank, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ³

In 2018, HKA received a $50,000 grant from the Blue Shield of California Foundation “to support development of a peer-to-peer learning network for foundation CEOs to be champions for racial equity in their own organizations.” ¹⁰

In 2022, KHA received a $75,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to assist community groups in racial and ethnic minority areas in applying for federal environmental grants, as well as consult with the Biden administration’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on how to direct grants to those organizations. ¹¹