By Brianna J. Heath ·Updated March 22, 2026 < /> Getting your Trinity Audio player ready… Pioneering in a space that has historically disenfranchised Black people can feel aspirational for most.
But for Arana Hankin-Biggers, it is a feat born of a lifelong commitment to excellence and the empowerment of our people. With over two decades of experience in government, public policy, and real estate development, her most recent venture as the co-founder of The Travel Agency, New York’s premier cannabis store, is her most ambitious and aligned venture yet. In just three years, she has built a business that centers community, social justice, and economic equity and has established a model for how cannabis entrepreneurship can be a force for enduring impact and change.
Opening their first location in Union Square in February 2023, The Travel Agency was the third legal dispensary in New York and has quickly become one of the city’s most coveted destinations. They offer the highest quality legal products, and their design is a case study in creative place-making. The sophisticated yet accessible shopping experience mirrors the euphoric and whimsical effects of the plant as they shift a narrative around something that has been heavily stigmatized as unsafe and dubious for decades due to the war on drugs.
“Our approach is to elevate the experience through design and education to make people feel safe and comfortable when shopping for cannabis,” she says. Their four stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn are on par with retail titans like Apple and Sephora, where the design and customer experience are defining factors in their success. Where they differ, however, is in their unwavering commitment to community, social equity, and economic empowerment.
Hankin-Biggers was born in New York, though her journey working toward the betterment of Black people really began in Milwaukee where she grew up. It was there that she first began her lifelong devotion to social justice, joining her local NAACP chapter at a young age and being heavily involved with community organizing. “Throughout my life, everything I have done is really trying to push forward the empowerment of Black people,” she tells ESSENCE.
Attending Howard University felt like a natural progression of the work Hankin-Biggers had been passionate about for years. “Going to an HBCU really gave me the tools to execute what I had already been doing on the ground in a very grassroots way during my childhood,” she shares. She was heavily involved in student organizing on campus and through her studies and community work gained a deeper understanding of the enduring legacy of Black people’s history in the United States. As an anthropology major, her first job was working on Howard’s African Burial Ground project as an osteological technical assistant doing skeletal analysis of the 490 full human remains that were excavated in lower Manhattan.
“For the first time, I had a tangible understanding of how our country was literally built on the backs of Black people physically and economically,” she says. “That work started the realization that Black people should have so much more than we do economically because of what we have done to build this country. The country has come this far because of Black Americans solely. Working in cannabis has only deepened that realization.” Those formative experiences solidified her desire to build a life where she could make a tangible difference using social justice to close the racial wealth gap.
Looking back on her career, it’s clear that every step Hankin-Biggers has taken has perfectly primed her for the pioneering work she is doing today. Prior to launching The Travel Agency, she worked across the private and public sectors in government and real estate development. Under New York governor David Paterson, she served as the New York State Assistant Commissioner for Economic Development, executing partnerships for minority and women-owned businesses as part of the administration’s social equity commitment. Following this work, she was also the Director of the Atlantic Yards Project for the Barclays Center and the Director of University’s Manhattanville Project for NYS Empire State Development.
Although that work was presented as a meaningful way to create economic opportunities for people of color, there proved to be many challenges in achieving true alignment with the values of social justice Hankin-Biggers had come to champion. “I was very frustrated during that work because the promises developers had made as part of their community benefit agreements did not materialize,” she shares. “That’s definitely been one of the most rewarding things about building The Travel Agency. It’s imbued with all of my values.”
For Hankins-Biggers and her team, espousing empty platitudes isn’t enough. “You can’t just say, ‘We support diversity. We support inclusivity. We support authenticity.’ It’s something you have to constantly work at, and every single thing that you do day in and day out has to incorporate those values,” she adds. That commitment shows up in everything they do: they prioritize BIPOC and LGBT+ owned brands, and their workforce is over 70% Black and brown.
“This industry needs to support and uplift communities of color because of the history around prohibition and all the damage the war on drugs has done to Black communities and communities of color,” she shares. “We’re very intentional about hiring people of color and people who have worked in the legacy space before it became legal here.” Across the nation, legacy workers who cultivated and sold cannabis products prior to legalization established the market for decades such that businesses were able to take advantage of the immense wealth generation opportunities with legalization.
The Travel Agency’s community investment initiatives are as dynamic as their product offerings. They were the first dispensary to partner with the New York Film Festival, have sponsored events with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and have created educational programming to bring cannabis to seniors and other groups who could benefit from the plant. Their most notable work, however, might be their partnership with The Doe Fund, a non-profit that has provided housing and employment and support services to over 15,000 people who have experienced homelessness or incarceration.
The Doe Fund is the majority owner of The Travel Agency’s Union Square location, which enabled Hankins-Biggers and her partners to secure their license at a time when the state was prioritizing licensure for individuals and groups disenfranchised by the war on drugs. “They have been instrumental in the approach we have taken to your business model. Fifty-one percent of proceeds from that location go toward the work they are doing,” she shares.
Through sales revenue, The Doe Fund has been able to nearly eliminate their services fees for clients, a benchmark the organization has been struggling to overcome throughout their nearly 40-year existence. “We’re very adamant about hiring people who have worked in the legacy space, selling cannabis before it was legal, or who have been previously incarcerated,” Hankin-Biggers shares. By doing so, they are affording people entry into an industry that is incredibly complicated, regulated, and opaque.
Beyond reducing the stigma around cannabis and creating life-changing community initiatives, Hankin-Biggers’s work with The Travel Agency has become a unique opportunity for generational wealth building, not just for herself but for her employees and the Black-owned brands they support. “Because of the stigma, there is a lot of unwillingness in the Black community to invest in cannabis companies, and I wish there were more that were doing it because there is so much opportunity,” she shares. “There are not enough Black people who have an ownership stake in this industry and we really need to grow that.”
In 2025, the global cannabis market size was valued at $102.72 billion, and by 2034 it is projected to grow to $1.433 Trillion. There are tremendous wealth opportunities present in the industry, and community-minded entrepreneurs like Hankin-Biggers are ensuring that, as this nascent market develops, Black and Brown people are not left behind, but can take claim of what is rightfully theirs.
The post Meet Arana Hankin-Biggers, The Woman Behind One Of New York’s Most Coveted Cannabis Dispensaries appeared first on Essence.