Trailblazers

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A.G. Gaston

Business & Entrepreneurship

Arthur George Gaston was a Birmingham business titan who built an empire spanning insurance, banking, real estate, construction, and media — all within a segregated economy. Born in 1892 to former sharecroppers, he turned 500 dollars into a fortune worth over 130 million by the time of his death at 103. His philosophy was simple: […]

Annie Malone

Business & Entrepreneurship

Annie Turnbo Malone was a millionaire, philanthropist, and beauty industry pioneer who built one of the first Black-owned corporations in America — years before Madam C.J. Walker, who actually trained under Malone before starting her own competing business. Malone’s Poro Company, founded in 1900 in St. Louis, sold hair care products and cosmetics for Black […]

Berry Gordy

Business & Entrepreneurship

Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records with an $800 loan from his family in 1959 and built it into the most successful independent record label in American history — a hit factory that produced more number-one singles than any label in the 1960s and broke down the racial barriers of American popular music. Motown’s sound […]

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Cathy Hughes

Business & Entrepreneurship

Cathy Liggins Hughes built the largest Black-owned radio network in the country from a single struggling AM station and became the first Black woman to chair a publicly traded corporation when Radio One went public on the NASDAQ in 1999. Today, her company — now called Urban One — encompasses radio, television (TV One), digital […]

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David Steward

Business & Entrepreneurship

David L. Steward founded World Wide Technology in 1990 and built it into the largest Black-owned business in America, with annual revenues exceeding $17 billion. WWT is a technology solutions provider that serves some of the world’s largest corporations and government agencies, partnering with companies like Cisco, Dell, and Microsoft to design and implement complex […]

Daymond John

Business & Entrepreneurship

Daymond Garfield John turned $40 worth of fabric into a billion-dollar brand. FUBU — For Us, By Us — began in 1992 in John’s mother’s house in Hollis, Queens, where he sewed hats and T-shirts and sold them on street corners. Within a decade, FUBU had generated over $6 billion in global retail sales and […]

Don Cornelius

Business & Entrepreneurship

Donald Cortez Cornelius created Soul Train — the longest-running first-run nationally syndicated program in television history, airing from 1971 to 2006. For 35 years, Soul Train was the heartbeat of Black popular culture, showcasing every major Black musical artist from James Brown to Beyoncé and broadcasting Black joy, fashion, dance, and style into living rooms […]

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Don Peebles

Business & Entrepreneurship

R. Donahue “Don” Peebles is one of the most successful real estate developers in America and the founder of the Peebles Corporation, one of the largest Black-owned real estate development companies in the country. His portfolio includes luxury residential towers, hotels, and mixed-use developments in New York, Miami, Washington, D.C., and other major cities, with […]

Earl G. Graves Sr.

Business & Entrepreneurship

Earl Gilbert Graves Sr. created the blueprint for Black economic empowerment when he founded Black Enterprise magazine in 1970. For five decades, the publication has been the authoritative voice on Black business, wealth building, and corporate America — educating, inspiring, and holding accountable. His annual BE 100s list of the largest Black-owned businesses became the […]

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Edna Lewis

Business & Entrepreneurship

Edna Lewis was the grande dame of Southern cooking — a chef and author who single-handedly elevated the food traditions of the rural Black South from folk cooking to a recognized American cuisine worthy of the world’s attention. Her 1976 cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, is considered one of the greatest American cookbooks ever […]

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Herman J. Russell

Business & Entrepreneurship

Herman Jerome Russell built the largest Black-owned construction company in America and quietly became one of the most influential power brokers in Atlanta — a city he helped construct, literally and figuratively. H.J. Russell & Company built the Georgia Dome, Hartsfield-Jackson Airport terminals, the Carter Presidential Center, and dozens of other landmarks. At its peak, […]

Issa Rae

Business & Entrepreneurship

Jo-Issa Rae Diop — Issa Rae — built a media empire by starting where the gatekeepers couldn’t stop her: YouTube. Her web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, launched in 2011, resonated with millions of viewers who saw themselves in her portrayal of a young Black woman navigating life with humor, vulnerability, and a […]

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Janice Bryant Howroyd

Business & Entrepreneurship

Janice Bryant Howroyd is the founder and CEO of ActOne Group, the largest privately held, minority-woman-owned staffing company in the United States. Starting with 1,500 dollars, a fax machine, and a borrowed phone in 1978, she built a global enterprise generating over 3 billion in annual revenue. Growing up in Tarboro, North Carolina during segregation, […]

John H. Johnson

Business & Entrepreneurship

John Harold Johnson built the most influential Black media empire in American history with a $500 loan secured by his mother’s furniture. In 1942, he founded Negro Digest, followed by Ebony in 1945 and Jet in 1951 — magazines that became the mirror in which Black America saw itself reflected with dignity, beauty, and aspiration. […]

Leah Chase

Business & Entrepreneurship

Leah Lange Chase — the Queen of Creole Cuisine — transformed Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans into both a culinary institution and a civil rights landmark. During the 1950s and ’60s, when segregation laws made it illegal for Black and white people to eat together, Dooky Chase’s became the meeting place where civil rights […]

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Lisa Price

Business & Entrepreneurship

Lisa Price started making hair and body products in her Brooklyn kitchen in 1993, mixing fragrances inspired by her love of music and her mother Carol. What began as a hobby sold at church flea markets became Carol’s Daughter — one of the most beloved and influential Black beauty brands in history. Price built the […]

Madam C.J. Walker

Business & Entrepreneurship

Born to parents who had been enslaved, Sarah Breedlove became Madam C.J. Walker and built a beauty empire that made her the first self-made female millionaire in American history.

Marcus Samuelsson

Business & Entrepreneurship

Marcus Samuelsson is the most celebrated Black chef in America — a James Beard Award winner, restaurateur, and culinary storyteller who has made Harlem the center of a global food narrative. His flagship restaurant, Red Rooster Harlem, is both a dining destination and a community institution, blending African American, African, Caribbean, and Swedish cuisines in […]

Mellody Hobson

Business & Entrepreneurship

Mellody Hobson is co-CEO of Ariel Investments — one of the largest Black-owned investment firms in America — and one of the most powerful women in corporate America. She serves as chair of the board of Starbucks, making her one of the few Black women to chair the board of a Fortune 500 company. Her […]

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Reginald Lewis

Business & Entrepreneurship

The first African American to build a billion-dollar company — Reginald Lewis executed the largest leveraged buyout of an international company by a Black businessman and proved that Black excellence has no ceiling in the world of high finance.

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Richelieu Dennis

Business & Entrepreneurship

Richelieu Dennis built Sundial Brands — the parent company of SheaMoisture and Nubian Heritage — from a folding table on 125th Street in Harlem into a natural beauty empire that he sold to Unilever in 2017 for an estimated $1.6 billion. Then he did something unusual: he used the proceeds to create the New Voices […]

Rihanna

Business & Entrepreneurship

Robyn Rihanna Fenty transcended music stardom to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs of her generation. Through Fenty Beauty, Savage X Fenty, and her broader portfolio, she built an enterprise valued over 1 billion dollars. Fenty Beauty launched in 2017 with 40 foundation shades, immediately exposing how the beauty industry had ignored darker skin […]

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Robert F. Smith

Business & Entrepreneurship

The wealthiest African American in history — Robert F. Smith built a private equity empire and stunned the world when he pledged to pay off the student loan debt of an entire graduating class at Morehouse College.

Robert L. Johnson

Business & Entrepreneurship

Robert Louis Johnson founded BET — Black Entertainment Television — in 1980 and built it into the first cable network targeting Black audiences, eventually selling it to Viacom in 2001 for approximately $3 billion. The sale made him the first Black billionaire in American history. BET changed the media landscape by proving that Black audiences […]