Sahra Noor, the older sister of U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, founded Grit Partners Consulting, a health and leadership firm. On her professional website, Noor states that she and the company have secured more than $20 million in funding for health initiatives and have consulted on projects backed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USAID, GAVI, and the World Bank.
Before launching the consultancy, Noor served as CEO of People’s Center Clinics & Services in Minneapolis from 2014 to 2018. During that period—while Omar was rising in Minnesota politics—the clinic received substantial public support, including a $2.2 million state capital budget appropriation that Omar later publicly celebrated securing. The detail drawing fresh attention is the firm’s Minnesota business registration. Public records show Grit Partners Consulting was incorporated in December 2022 at 17626 Hyacinth Way in Lakeville, a suburban residential address.
That same address has been used by other businesses whose residents and managers have documented connections to individuals later convicted in the Feeding Our Future fraud. Feeding Our Future was a Minnesota nonprofit that exploited COVID-era expansions of the federal child nutrition program. Federal prosecutors described it as one of the largest pandemic-relief fraud schemes ever charged, involving more than $250 million in stolen funds. Dozens of people were charged; many were convicted or pleaded guilty.
The founder received a lengthy prison sentence. Noor herself has not been accused of any crime related to the scandal. The only established link is the shared Lakeville address. Investigators and reporters note that the property’s residents, including Ister Ahmed Afraa (also known as Ismahan Afraah) and Mashah Ahmed Ali, appear in business filings connected to multiple Feeding Our Future defendants.
The overlap has prompted renewed scrutiny. Omar has previously faced questions about campaign donations from individuals later named in the fraud case and about a video in which she promoted a restaurant later central to the scheme. She has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the fraud.
Still, the pattern is hard to ignore: a high-profile congresswoman’s sister builds a health consultancy that boasts of securing over $20 million, registers it at an address already tied to convicted fraudsters in Minnesota’s largest pandemic feeding scam, and does so against the backdrop of earlier public funding directed to a clinic she once led. The records are public. The coincidences are documented. And the questions they raise are not going away.
