Inspired by a consultant’s speech about her efforts to empower Black women through financial literacy, staffers with the city of St. Paul’s Office of Financial Empowerment invited Chloe B. McKenzie to apply for the opportunity to prepare a curriculum for St. Paul Public School students and other community partners.
The goal was to launch a significant expansion of Mayor Melvin Carter’s “CollegeBound” initiative to put low-income kids on the path to college, and eventually widen it to educate entire families on accumulating savings.
The contract was signed, and St. Paul paid McKenzie’s nonprofit, BlackFem, $900,000, while expecting lessons on personal budgeting to roll out this year in kindergarten classrooms throughout the city. The money changed hands, but lessons on money management never followed.
Lawsuit
In October, the city of St. Paul filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis seeking an unspecified amount of restitution from BlackFem, which is based in Maryland and New York City. The lawsuit notes that under the $1 million contract, “WealthRise” lesson plans were due in December 2024 but never delivered, and an evaluation toolkit and messaging plan were due in March of this year but likewise never materialized.
“The city has spent $900,000 on a product it has not received and cannot use without threat of litigation from (BlackFem),” reads the lawsuit, which cites five claims, ranging from breach of contract to unjust enrichment.
On Sept. 30, two days before St. Paul Public Schools staff were scheduled to be trained in the “WealthRise” financial literacy curriculum, McKenzie emailed school district staff and informed them, with no explanation provided, that the training would “not be moving forward,” according to the city’s lawsuit.
BlackFem filed a 27-page counterclaim against the city on Oct. 30, and the city responded with a 17-page amended complaint in November. Among McKenzie’s concerns, the city’s Office of Financial Empowerment began signaling their intent to allow St. Paul Public School teachers to make changes to her curriculum, including “altering the sequence of lessons, removing materials, and otherwise tailoring content.”
“This is about the city being disgruntled about what they can do with the work product because of copyright and intellectual property law,” said McKenzie, in an interview Tuesday. “The city tried to file a breach claim saying we didn’t submit these materials, when in fact we did, and we did on time, and we have approvals from the city officials who were in charge of that. There is a very serious legal question about who gets to retain ownership of the intellectual property.”
“I was never told I was in breach of contract until I got served with a lawsuit,” she added. “We’re 90% done, and St. Paul residents deserve this. We’ve done this with hundreds of schools across the country, and it’s never been an issue until now.”
‘There is no point in holding … the training session’
Over McKenzie’s objections, the city wanted the right to access the materials after the contract ended and share them with community partners. Her counterclaim has asked for full payment of the $1 million contract, court costs and a declaration that the WealthRise curriculum and trademark remain the property of BlackFem and the city does not have a right to copy or distribute them or create derivative works.
“My client requests that the city terminate the contract … so as to not cause even more confusion or difficulty to SPPS and other community organizations,” reads a Sept. 24 letter from BlackFem’s legal counsel to the city, quoted in the company’s counterclaim. “There is no point in holding the … training session if the city’s goal is just to make more claims that my client is defaming the city or acting in bad faith simply by stating ownership over its own intellectual property.”
The federal court released pre-trial scheduling orders on Dec. 3, lining up a settlement conference for March 23, 2026 and other court appearances to follow. If the case does not settle, a court trial could take place April 1, 2027.
BlackFem, according to its website, was founded in 2015 by McKenzie, a former Wall Street mortgage trader and financial counselor who grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland. In 2021, McKenzie expanded her offerings to include 10Seven consulting and the nonprofit 10Seven Project, which works with “groups beyond the Black community that are affected by financial trauma.”
10Seven was initially named in the lawsuit but later dropped as a defendant. The St. Paul Public Schools were not named as a plaintiff or defendant in the lawsuits.
“We are on the ground, partnering with the nation’s most forward-thinking governmental bodies and activists to reimagine wealth-building opportunities for Black women,” reads the BlackFem website. “For students, we build curricula that heals their financial trauma and teaches them how to build wealth.”
A $900,000 pay-out
Elsewhere on its website, BlackFem indicates that the greatest impacts on a household’s financial health are structural and societal, not based on personal choice or know-how, and its focus is on “wealth justice,” a term McKenzie says she coined.
“The greatest influence on a person’s ability to build wealth isn’t financial knowledge,” reads the website. “It’s redlining. It’s housing discrimination. It’s wage gaps. It is the total of all these unfair institutions and more that clearly hold back Black women from succeeding financially. With discrimination invisibly embedded in every policy, every school, every part of public life — it’s clear the mechanisms meant to hold up our communities instead inflict perpetual violence against those most vulnerable. The system isn’t broken. It is actively destructive.”
After encountering McKenzie at the Midwest Asset Building conference in 2022, city officials later invited her to apply to be part of an expansion of the Office of Financial Empowerment’s CollegeBound program, one of Carter’s favored projects, which links the city’s newborns to college savings accounts at birth. The hope was to have a wealth building curriculum in place by the fall of 2025, just as the first set of account holders was starting kindergarten.
The city issued a request for proposals in February 2024 for a curriculum that could eventually roll out in three parts, including pre-k through fifth grade student lessons through the St. Paul schools, afterschool programs, and “whole family literacy” through community partners. BlackFem was awarded the contract, but problems quickly followed, according to the city.
“From the start of the contract, defendants made up excuses for performance and failed to meet deadlines,” reads the city’s amended complaint. “Passionate about the goals of the project, (St. Paul’s Office of Financial Empowerment) worked with defendants despite the delays. Defendants issued two invoices, on September 9, 2024 and April 1, 2025, for $500,000 and $400,000 respectively. The city paid these invoices.”
The complaint goes on to say: “In June 2025, contrary to the terms of the contract, defendants informed OFE that when the contract expires, none of the curriculum that they have developed for any of the three programs would be available to the city or its partners unless the city paid an ongoing fee to BlackFem.”
Intellectual property
In July 2025, BlackFem seemed to relent in part, indicating the materials would be issued to the city at the end of the contract in a “locked” PDF software format, meaning the lesson plans could be used internally but not shared with the city’s partners to teach wealth literacy to CollegeBound students or families.
“BlackFem admits … and affirmatively states that the contract did not transfer ownership of BlackFem’s or any other party’s intellectual property to the city,” reads the company’s counterclaim. “While the contract does state that ‘work product’ – as defined in the contract – ‘will become the property of the city after final payment is made,’ the contract makes clear that ‘work product’ does not include any of BlackFem’s intellectual property.”
By late August, McKenzie had sent letters to the St. Public Public Schools and other community partners “threatening that any use of the curriculum ‘could expose (their) institution to potential legal liability.’”
The city then responded with a cease-and-desist letter dated Aug. 27, demanding that McKenzie and BlackFem stop contacting partners about issues related to the dispute and retract its previous communications. On Sept. 3, BlackFem’s legal counsel responded: “BlackFem will not be silenced by the city and will not rescind or retract any communications to CollegeBound partners.”
Three weeks later, BlackFem’s attorney asked that the contract be canceled, and said there was no point in hosting an Oct. 2 training with the school district.
“If the city prefers to terminate the agreement at this stage without further obligation, my client will not object,” reads a letter from BlackFem’s legal counsel to the city, quoted in the lawsuit.
The letter made no mention of repaying the city its $900,000.
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