The People Who Paved the Way

Trailblazers

Pioneers, barrier-breakers, and history-makers who changed what's possible.

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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

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

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 […]

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