Building a Business While Raising a Family:
How Khaliyah Heaven Barakhyahu Leads With Intention
As CEO & Team Lead of New Canaan Properties, LLC, Certified WBE Khaliyah Heaven Barakhyahu is growing a real estate business with an expanding corporate relocation focus while raising and homeschooling her three daughters. This August, as her youngest prepares to enter seventh grade, Khaliyah is thinking about business growth and education in much the same way: as opportunities to keep learning, adapting, and preparing for what comes next.
Khaliyah Heaven Barakhyahu did not set out to become a real estate CEO.
Born in New York, raised in New Jersey, and now a Virginia resident of 27 years, Khaliyah grew up in a military family. Her father served in the Army, while her mother balanced her career with raising three children. Their example gave Khaliyah an early understanding of responsibility, hard work, and the importance of family.
She initially imagined a career in law or diplomacy. Instead, she earned a degree in elementary education, with minors in Spanish and special education, and became a teacher.
Later, after she and her husband decided to homeschool their three daughters, education became an even more personal part of her life. At the same time, entrepreneurship began taking shape.
A favor for a friend who needed help planning a wedding eventually became Heavenly Haven Productions, an event-planning company Khaliyah operated for about 16 years. She later became a real estate investor and landlord, then a REALTOR®, and eventually founded New Canaan Properties, LLC.
Each role taught her something she now applies as a CEO.
“Teaching helped me educate clients. Event planning taught me logistics and how to manage a hundred moving pieces at once. Being a landlord taught me about investments and problem-solving. And motherhood taught me patience, advocacy, and how to keep going when plans change,” she said.
When a Business Closed, Another Opportunity Opened
The transition into real estate became more urgent during COVID, when gatherings stopped, and Khaliyah’s event-planning business came to a halt.
Years earlier, she had purchased a real estate course through Groupon because she was already investing in rental properties and believed a license would make her a better landlord. During the pandemic, she returned to that course and decided to pursue real estate seriously.
New Canaan Properties has since grown to serve buyers, sellers, investors, and relocating families. Khaliyah has also expanded into corporate relocation and teaches other real estate professionals.
One of her current priorities is developing corporate partnerships with companies that need support relocating employees and their families.
For Khaliyah, relocation is about more than finding a house.
Employees may be preparing for a new role while learning a new community, enrolling children in school, coordinating family needs, and managing the logistics of a move. New Canaan Properties is developing its relocation service around reducing that burden so employees can focus more quickly on their work and their families.
That business direction was one reason Khaliyah applied to the Capital One SAGE program.
“I knew where I wanted New Canaan Properties to go, but I also knew I needed help building the bridge between where the company was and where I wanted it to be,” she said.
Through SAGE, she had an opportunity to step outside daily operations and examine the business from a growth perspective, including whom the company serves, what differentiates its relocation offering, what systems it needs, and how to communicate its value to corporate partners.
The program also gave her access to mentors, other women business owners, corporate perspectives, and direct feedback.
A CEO Goes Back to School, Too
This year, Khaliyah brought an especially important guest to SAGE: her 12-year-old daughter, Na’vah Heaven Barakhyahu.
Na’vah is entering seventh grade this fall and is Khaliyah’s last homeschooled student. For a mother who began her career as an educator and has homeschooled all three of her daughters, bringing Na’vah into a room of women CEOs was part of her education.
“I wanted her to hear conversations about revenue, strategy, contracts, leadership, mistakes, growth, and opportunity,” Khaliyah said.
She also wanted her daughter to see something children do not always witness: her mother learning.
Na’vah has grown up seeing Khaliyah teach, work with clients, handle business calls, attend meetings, solve problems, and make decisions. At SAGE, she saw her mother ask questions, receive feedback, reconsider ideas, and continue developing as a leader.
“There is something very different about telling your daughter, ‘You can become a CEO,’ and allowing her to actually sit in a room full of women CEOs,” Khaliyah said.
For Na’vah, the experience provided a different view of what running a business involves.
“I get to see a lot of what happens behind the scenes as my mom builds and runs a business,” she said. “I have learned that running a business can be hard.”
She has also learned something about persistence.
“If something does not work the first time, you can learn from it, try something different, and keep going.”
As families across the region prepare for a new school year, Khaliyah’s household offers a reminder that education can happen in many places. Sometimes it happens at a desk. Sometimes it happens while listening to business owners discuss growth, contracts, staffing, and strategy.
Rethinking “Balance” as a Working Mother
Khaliyah does not describe life as a CEO and mother in terms of achieving perfect balance.
“I’m not sure I believe balance means everything gets an equal amount of time, because in my experience, it usually doesn’t,” she said.
Instead, she focuses on being intentional about where her time goes.
Some periods require more from the company, while others require more from her family. She protects important family commitments on her calendar, delegates when possible, and looks for ways to stay connected even when business demands are high.
Her daughters have also grown up alongside her businesses. They have accompanied her to events, waited during real estate showings, witnessed interviews, heard business calls, and watched plans change in real time.
That experience has shaped Khaliyah’s leadership as much as her professional background has.
“Motherhood has made me a better CEO,” she said. “Raising and homeschooling three daughters has taught me patience, flexibility, communication, problem-solving, and how to understand that different people need different things from you.”
Certification as a Starting Point
Khaliyah first learned about WBEC Metro NY and Greater DMV through another business development opportunity. After participating in an NMSDC University of Richmond business cohort, sponsored by Capital One, she was invited to participate in SAGE. Becoming WBENC-Certified was one of the requirements.
What began as a program requirement became something broader.
Through Certification, SAGE, and the WBEC NY DMV community, Khaliyah says she has gained relationships, business knowledge, exposure to corporate perspectives, and a clearer understanding of how to position New Canaan Properties for larger opportunities.
She also sees an important distinction between obtaining Certification and putting it to work.
“The value is not simply in having the Certification,” she said. “The value comes from participating in the community, attending events, introducing yourself, going to matchmaking sessions, learning who the corporate members are and what they purchase, building relationships with other WBEs, and following up after those initial conversations.”
For Khaliyah, the next stage is about continuing to strengthen New Canaan Properties and developing the systems, relationships, and capacity needed to pursue corporate relocation opportunities.
And as another school year begins for Na’vah, both mother and daughter are still learning.
Khaliyah hopes that lesson stays with all three of her daughters.
“I want them to know they do not have to have every detail of their lives figured out at 18, 21, or even 40,” she said.
What matters, she believes, is remaining willing to learn, adjust, and pursue the opportunities that fit the life and business you are working to build.