When AMCF Executive Director Shazeen Mufti, COR CDC Managing Director Farrah Khan, and AMCF Director of Community Programs Lisa Kahler first sat down to talk about economic mobility, the conversation didn’t end with talk. It ended with thirty Muslim women in a classroom, seven Saturday mornings, and a pitch competition that put a first-time Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) founder on the floor of one of the country’s largest natural products expos.
That winner — Fiona Motala of Lekker Kitchen — used the prize funds to cover registration, develop samples, design her booth, and obtain supplies to exhibit at Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, CA. What started as a conversation between two community leaders became something real.
This week, AMCF hosted a panel discussion bringing the cohort full circle. Shazeen moderated, joined by Farrah Khan, Riaz Surti (President and Founder of Hearthy Foods, who served as a competition judge), and Fiona Motala (Founder and CEO of Lekker Kitchen, the cohort’s first-place winner) for a reflection on what was built, what worked, and what the journey has meant.
A Partnership Rooted in Community Development
COR CDC — short for Community Development Corporation — is based out of Christ Our Redeemer AME Church in Irvine. As Farrah explained on the panel, the CDC model emerged from the civil rights era, when Black churches took on the work of building economic independence for communities that government and other institutions had failed. COR CDC has been doing that work in Orange County since 2001, with civic engagement programming, affordable housing partnerships, workforce development, and — since 2007 — the Banking on Your Success entrepreneurship course.
When Shazeen and Farrah began discussing what AMCF could bring to the table, the answer was layering, not duplication. Rather than build a parallel program, AMCF partnered with COR CDC’s existing curriculum and added the piece their community most needed: a session on Sharia-compliant banking and funding. The standard six-week course became seven, with Eaman Shebley, Founder of TACS and a Women’s Giving Circle member, virtually leading this additional session.
The First All-Women, All-Muslim Cohort
For COR CDC, this was a first. Previous cohorts had been co-ed, and Farrah said the dynamic shifted noticeably with thirty Muslim women in the room. When someone was struggling with an idea, three or four other participants would jump in to help — a built-in camaraderie that the instructors said they hadn’t seen in earlier cohorts. The participants formed a WhatsApp group that’s still active today, sharing resources, business updates, and event invitations long after the final session.
The range of business ideas surprised everyone. The cohort included founders working on real estate, medical services, food production, organic-cotton hijabs, document preparation services for immigrant communities, catering, and more. Some arrived with established businesses. Others arrived with little more than an idea they’d been carrying for years.
Voices from the Panel
Riaz Surti, Hearthy Foods
Riaz bought his first business — a KFC franchise — at eighteen, a month after his father passed away. He went on to open the first halal Taco Bell-KFC combo locations in Southern California, drawing customers from across the region. After selling the restaurants in 2005, he pivoted into frozen halal foods — samosas for Whole Foods, Costco, and Sam’s Club; gluten-free desserts for Vons, Safeway, and Albertsons — before founding Hearthy Foods, the leading producer of halal collagen, gelatin, creatine, and whey protein supplements. The business was founded on the principle of providing high-quality products for everyone.
His advice to the cohort was direct: start small, prove the concept, and build steadily. Being a business person, he said, is like building a muscle — the more you do it, the stronger you get, and the more you can handle.
Fiona Motala, Lekker Kitchen
Fiona’s story started a long way from CPG. A former fashion designer turned stay-at-home mom, she spent years driving over a hundred miles a day as the “hot lunch lady,” debate coach, and science fair coordinator at her kids’ school. By the time she got home, the family often ate cereal or scrambled eggs for dinner — not because she didn’t care, but because halal take-home options near them simply didn’t exist.
The idea for Lekker Kitchen — a line of halal-certified frozen meals for busy families — sat in her head for seventeen years before she launched the company. Lekker Kitchen is the first HFSAA-certified, woman-owned CPG brand of its kind in the nation, with thirteen products in the line drawing on Fiona’s Gujarati heritage, South African upbringing, and twenty-six years in the United States. Lekker Kitchen sources its meat from ethical, local farms — hand-slaughtered, with no hormones or antibiotics ever. The brand now ships nationwide.
Fiona almost didn’t pitch at the cohort’s competition. She wanted to give the other women a chance at the prize money. The day before the pitch, she learned about an opportunity to exhibit at Natural Products Expo West — and decided to compete. She won, applied the funds toward booth participation and product sampling at the expo, and came back with a pipeline of new leads. As she told the panel, the win validated her company, gave her confidence as a founder, and gave her something she could carry into every other area of the business.
The Top Three
First place went to Fiona Motala / Lekker Kitchen. Second place went to Rana Hamwi / Heavenly Bites, a baker and caterer producing desserts for Yemeni coffee shops in Southern California. Third place went to a participant building a document preparation service for English-, Spanish-, and Arabic-speaking immigrant communities — helping people navigate the maze of government paperwork for marriage, divorce, business licensing, and visas.
Riaz, reflecting on his time as a judge, said what stood out about Fiona’s pitch wasn’t just the polish of an established business. It was the actionable ask: she knew exactly what the prize money would do, and exactly what the return would be. The other panelists echoed the lesson — every founder, no matter their stage, benefits from being able to articulate the specific outcome of the next dollar invested.
The Investor Question
When the panel opened to audience questions, the first one was about finding investors. The answer from all three panelists was, in different words, the same: be careful what you give away.
Riaz framed it as control. Whenever a founder takes on an investor, they’re also giving a part of the company away — which means giving up some degree of control. His recommendation: prove the concept first, sell something on a small scale, and bring in capital only once the business is shown to work. Fiona added that any investor needs to align with the founder’s non-negotiables, or the equity trade can shift the essence of the company. Both returned, more than once, to the same theme — tawakkul. Trust in Allah as the greatest investor, do the work, and watch the doors open.
Farrah agreed that early-stage founders are usually better served by raising money within family and friends than by bringing in outside investors who expect a specific return on a specific timeline. For founders looking for non-equity options, Shazeen highlighted Kiva and Grameen America, both of which offer microloans with low or no interest, structured as pay-it-forward community lending.
COR CDC: Continuing to Build
COR CDC plans to run additional Banking on Your Success cohorts in 2026, and also offers shorter boot camps throughout the year on topics like HR, AI and digital tools, business resiliency, and small business insurance — all open to BYS alumni. You can learn more at corcdc.org.
And if you’re a Muslim woman who has been carrying a business idea — the way Fiona carried Lekker Kitchen for seventeen years — explore Lekker Kitchen’s story as a reminder that the right moment and the right community can make all the difference. Lekker Kitchen is now shipping nationwide at lekkerkitchen.com.