Women hold up half the sky—and an increasingly large piece of the global economy. That’s why leading up to International Women’s Day, we’ll be pairing with our sponsor Amazon to feature rising female founders and innovators in small business, exploring how they navigate everyday and extraordinary challenges and champion change within their brands and communities.

First up is Karen Blackwell, who has a dream job: She runs her own fair trade chocolate company, called Kanda Chocolates. Here’s how she’s sweetening the pot for female leaders everywhere, what she wants you to know about the African cocoa industry, and how she keeps from eating the merchandise. (Spoiler: She doesn’t.)

P.S. Want to buy chocolate from Kanda Chocolates? (You do.) Click here to discover + shop Karen’s small business, plus tons more female-led brands at Amazon.

You’re from Chicago. How did you end up making chocolate in Ghana?
My story starts a little differently. My family and I are really big into genealogy. There’s been a real sense of pride in my life to come from Africa. So I went to Ghana. We went to the coast and we were at the Door of No Return, which is the last place enslaved people saw before being kidnapped to America. But when I looked out at the beach, all I saw were kids playing and fisherman pulling in their catches. They all had so much joy. I said, “I want to connect with my roots in Ghana, but it doesn’t need charity. They’re perfectly happy. They have their own successes.” But I wanted to help them come out of the debt of colonialism. Chocolate is part of that.

What change do you hope your chocolate can make in the wider world?
We start with fair trade cocoa—it’s pennies [more] to do it; we should all be doing it. I’m on a fair trade mission, so I want you to know that Ghana is the 2nd largest exporter of cocoa, but they aren’t making money on the larger cost of chocolate. I want you to know that, and celebrate it! And of course, we want to be able to make a sustainable difference. We give 10% of our proceeds to charity. 2-3 years from now, I want to be like, “Here’s a million dollars we donated, and here’s what it did in the community.”

As a small business founder, what challenges were actually opportunities for you?
A small advertising budget! I need to get our name out there, so I’m writing guest blogs, I’m speaking on panels, I’ll show up on MLK Day to do a speech because I get to talk about our chocolates. I had no idea I’d be the face of my company, but with a small advertising budget, you have to get creative, and it gives me a real opportunity to connect with a wider community, too. Also, because our ad budget is small, we use Amazon as a way for new customers to embrace us, which has been amazing.

How else has Amazon helped your business?
It’s liquid gold. It’s a game changer. People are finding me when they wouldn’t have found me. I always use the analogy, if you’re a tree in the forest and you fall, does anyone hear you? The answer is no. Developing our chocolate was the first step in my business, but then it was like, “Okay, we make an amazing product. Now how do people find us?” Amazon is a pathway to discovery. You go onto Amazon to be discovered and then there are tools to help. My business has soared because of Amazon.

How have you changed your business to make it better?
One change we’ve embraced are partnerships. We partnered with a black-owned female whiskey company and we’re doing tastings at no cost to us, so we’re getting to work with another brand we believe in and getting new people to discover our product. That’s such a win. We also just launched mini-sized bars, because that way, people can have a few bites and walk away. Apparently, people couldn’t stop eating our full-sized bars—which is a good problem to have! But we wanted to make small pieces more convenient.

You mentioned partnerships. How do you use them to champion other small businesses while still being focused on your mission and success?
Well, here’s an easy way. People always ask, “Where’d you get that?” when you wear something on social media. So I’ll always tag stores, clothing, anything I can, even if it’s just in a casual photo or a headshot. I try to be mindful of that, because look, I have like 500 followers, but if just one small business gets one more order because of me, that’s amazing! And what would happen if we all did that for businesses we believed in? The other way I help other entrepreneurs is that I’ll teach them! I’m not a consultant, but if someone says, “I don’t know how to file for a trademark,” I’ll find time, and we’ll do it together. I’m a big advocate for helping people out.

Has the way you shop changed since starting your own business?
Yes. Every time I need to buy something, I look for “woman-owned!” Just knowing where your things come from, who made them, and why they’re special, that brings a new meaning to shopping.