Shakia Williams

She Came Back to Open a Winery. Now, She’s Pouring for the Whole City.

When Shakia Williams decided to join Philadelphia’s Phambassador program, she didn’t intend to become a milestone. She just believed in the city, her work, and doing all she can to make things better.

But Williams, the founder and owner of Hatboro’s Cyrenity Sips Winery, the first Black woman-owned winery in Pennsylvania, is the 10,000th person to sign up to help introduce her city to all its visitors this year. And while the big number makes for a big headline, what’s behind it is a story about roots, and how they tie you to a place. The way she sees it, she’s not just helping show off the city she calls home. She’s also supporting the small businesses that help power our local economy.

“I believe in this city, and it’s a great place to do business,” she says. “But I also know there’s more we can do to support the small businesses that help their community thrive. And I want to make sure dollars are being recycled back into Philadelphia, so that they can benefit too.”

Southwest Philly, by way of everywhere else

Shakia grew up near 57th and Baltimore in Southwest Philadelphia, attending Harrington Elementary and Shaw Middle School, with a brief stint at Catholic school before graduating from John Bartram High. She remembers science lessons at the Franklin Institute and art lessons at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — and the difference between what watercolors looked like in real paintings and what she made with construction paper.

“You were able to see why it was important,” she says. “Those visits were very instrumental in my upbringing. Just being able to actually touch these things and make the connection.”

Eventually she wound up at Pierce College. And it was on a visit to her old neighborhood that she ran into her childhood boyfriend, Cliff, who would become her husband. He’d joined the Navy when she went off to college.

“We were both visiting a mutual friend. He was coming up from Virginia Beach, and I just happened to be in the neighborhood that day,” she says.

The couple rekindled their relationship, and Shakia followed Cliff to Virginia Beach, where he was stationed. They’ve been together ever since.

She started working at a Virginia Beach winery, then began trying her hand at it — setting up a production process in their garage so she could just play around with flavors.

“I didn’t realize how much I like chemistry until I started making wine,” she says.

Coming Home

But the city she grew up in never stopped calling her back. She returned to open her winery, to chase the business she wanted to build, and because Philadelphia remained the place where she felt most grounded and connected.

That was during the pandemic, when nothing about opening a business was easy. She ended up in Hatboro because the prices made sense and Montgomery County’s permitting process moved faster than Philadelphia’s, which was still weighed down by delays and short-staffed offices. Today, she lives in Pennypack, in Northeast Philadelphia, and commutes out to the winery.

She doesn’t regret a mile of it.

“Philly is like no other place I’ve been. There’s this sense of grittiness, but at the same time, love. We can be a little rough around the edges, but it’s all done with a sense of love and purpose.”

The winery opened in 2022. She makes wine from grapes sourced in Pennsylvania, California, and Italy, and fruit wines from a farm in Jersey. Peach wine with edible glitter is her number one seller. She is also currently completing a winemaking certificate through UC Davis.

And the business has become a family affair. Her daughter Cyan works at the winery part time as tasting room manager and is also a student at Community College of Philadelphia. Every February, Cyan makes a new blue wine. Cotton candy, blue raspberry, blue Hawaiian. It’s become a tradition.

The Wine Cup

Her first ambassador event was a Navy Yard wine festival she organized herself, called the Wine Cup — a name that nodded to the FIFA World Cup coming to Philadelphia this summer. She reached out to local small businesses, wineries, breweries, and distilleries, and brought them in under one roof, specifically because she wanted vendors who wouldn’t otherwise land on the FIFA radar to get their moment.

“We are making sure we’re putting them in the front lines for this event,” she says.

What it means to tend to a place

Under the Cyrenity Sips umbrella, Shakia now hosts four winemakers, including herself. Aurora’s Vines came on in 2024, making sweeter wines for newer drinkers. KiEae Wines joined in 2025, blending innovation with tradition, working with Carmenere, Colombard, Sauvignon Blanc, a kibi pear, elderberry, and a caramel. In 2026, she brought on Ismenie Wines, whose whole portfolio is floral — dandelion, hibiscus, honeysuckle. Her goal is fifteen brands in fifteen years. Eventually, she says, she may leave Hatboro and move the whole operation into the city.

And she’s watching that city closely. A proposed rollback of a business income and receipts tax exemption for micro-businesses — the kind that applies to companies earning under $100,000 — has small operators on edge. She fears it will push businesses to the suburbs.

“If there’s no business in the city, the taxes are higher. There’s nothing to offset the cost,” she says.

She’s encouraging the vendors she brought into the Wine Cup to get active and sign onto advocacy efforts that would preserve the exemption. When you say to her that it sounds like she’s expressing love for the city through advocacy, she doesn’t deflect it.

“We have to support each other,” she says.

That’s also, more or less, what she’s trying to do with her new role as Phambassador: make the city real and specific for people who are just arriving, and put small businesses in front of visitors who wouldn’t otherwise find them.

Because when you love a city the way she does, you show up when it asks you to help. You even bring the wine.