Tarik Black is a husband to Kennedy Raye, father of three, and a man who will tell you plainly — basketball was never the destination. It was the vehicle.

His story begins with a transfer. When Tarik left the University of Memphis for the University of Kansas his senior year, God had more than a basketball team waiting for him. Through his teammate Christian Garrett, Tarik surrendered his life to Christ — and through that relationship, he found his spiritual parents, Roger and Cynthia Garrett-Charles, who have walked with him ever since. That surrender didn’t just change his faith. It gave him a vision. To be a Kingdom talent worker, assigned to integrally leverage the marketplace and multiply that which has been entrusted to him.

What followed was over a decade of professional basketball at the highest levels — the NBA with the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets, and six countries internationally through the EuroLeague. But while others saw a basketball career, Tarik was building in parallel. Los Angeles is where his business identity began to form. God placed a specific mentor in his life there — someone whose standard of excellence off the court was as relentless as anything he demonstrated on it — and that relationship permanently raised the bar for how Tarik thought about purpose, preparation, and building with intention.

From there, the compounding began. Two seasons in Israel placed him inside one of the world’s most innovative startup ecosystems, where he built relationships with venture capitalists, AI founders, and technology leaders that continue today. As the youngest participant at multiple NBPA business and real estate programs, he was sitting in rooms with Junior Bridgeman — who built a $600M franchise empire — and absorbing frameworks for ownership and scale while still actively playing. He co-founded two companies in Dallas while under contract overseas, personally transacted $14M in real estate, and built an early-stage investment portfolio spanning venture capital, fintech, and technology.

Today Tarik serves as SVP of Business Development at OLOS, an AI-powered multifamily development firm solving the affordable housing crisis through faith-based land partnerships across Greater Los Angeles. It is the convergence of everything — real estate, faith community, technology, and purpose. But he is quick to say he is a generalist by calling, not a specialist by accident. His conviction is that real estate, venture capital, and community impact are not competing answers — the best formula is strategic exposure to all three.

Legacy and lineage drive everything. The vision God gave him at KU — to be a Kingdom talent worker, assigned to integrally leverage the marketplace and multiply that which has been entrusted to him — is not just a professional aspiration. It is what he is building for Kennedy Raye, for his children, and for the generations that follow.

God opened the doors. Obedience walked him through them.