This February, Employment Connection is celebrating Black History Month by honoring local leaders in the St. Louis region. Today we recognize Yaphett El-Amin, Executive Director of MOKAN Construction and Contractors Assistance Center.
Since 1974, MOKAN has served as a vital link between minority and women owned firms and the general construction community.
Yaphett has been on the forefront of business development and advocacy issues within the
St. Louis Community for more than 20 years. She utilizes a proactive, preemptive, and anticipatory approach to these issues that prevents and removes obstacles to achieving diversity program goals. She is a leading diversity consultant in the St. Louis region. She provides superior diversity and inclusion services to lead projects to successful completion.
In 2015, under her leadership, MOKAN developed the MOKAN Educational Institute aimed at increasing minority business capacity and construction workforce diversity education, increasing the amount of trained and prepared minorities and women for gainful employment within the St. Louis construction industry.
Yaphett brings decades of local community understanding and knowledge accumulated from her past tenure in the Missouri Legislature as well as her active guidance and leadership in providing training and increased business and workforce opportunities for minority businesses and workers in the St. Louis area.
Yaphett is also the President of Efficacy Consulting and Development, a private company founded in 2007, that specializes in providing consulting and real estate development services. After working with the Missouri Housing and Development Commission (MHDC) Administration in 2011, to establish stronger business inclusion initiatives, Yaphett expanded Efficacy’s focus to further stabilize communities through the expansion of affordable housing development with the creation of an Emerging Business Initiative program designed to increase the number of minority developers and businesses within the State of Missouri.
In 2015, Yaphett completed the Village at Delmar Place Development, a 40-unit LIHTC townhome and garden home development. She quickly expanded upon her vision to further stabilize other disadvantaged communities, with the Finney Place project consisting of 40 single-family homes, followed by the Scott Manor Senior homes, a 42-unit mixed-use senior facility with commercial business and community meeting space.
In 2018, Yaphett expanded Efficacy’s footprint to the state of Illinois with the renovation of the historic Broadview Hotel in downtown East St. Louis, which will be converted to the New Broadview, a mixed-use senior facility that will feature 110 senior units and more than 25,000 square feet of community commercial space. Yaphett has again expanded Efficacy’s success toward the stabilization and rebuilding efforts in communities within the states of Georgia and Oklahoma. She will continue to build upon Efficacy’s mission to work hand in hand with these
communities to identify problems, create effective solutions, and enhance neighborhoods one block at a time.
Yaphett is a mother of two wonderful children, Hasan (21) and Ruqaiyah (17).