Black Women Creating Their Own Financial Success

According to a GoDaddy's Venture Forward research initiative, Black women remain the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs, more than doubling since August 2019. Black women total 10% of total entrepreneurs surveyed for the latest report, representing a 70% increase in the number of Black women-owned businesses started prior to the pandemic.

Who was the first Black female millionairess?  Most would say, Madam C.J. Walker who founded a beauty empire of hair care and cosmetics at the beginning of the 20^th century, but it was Mary Ellen Pleasant, a self-made millionaire entrepreneur, benefactress and leading abolitionist in the Gold-Rush era, remembered as the Mother of the California Civil Rights Movement, who beat her to the bank by decades.

While little is known of her early years, as a child she was sent to be raised by a Nantucket Quaker family of storekeepers.  There she learned of the two forces that drove the rest of her life, entrepreneurship and the abolitionist movement.  

Married to a prominent Cuban abolitionist builder, she became a member of the ‘Underground Railroad,’ working by day as a tailor in Boston, at night helping send fugitives to Canada, Nova Scotia and Mexico.   At her husband’s death Mary received a sizable inheritance, money that would fund her own escape from the law to New Orleans and then to San Francisco.

There she worked ‘undercover’ as a cook and housekeeper to rich businessmen, eavesdropping for any financial gossip or insider information she could get.  She became a skilled investor, ploughing her earnings into stock and money markets, dabbling in gold and silver exchanges, and lending money to miners and other businessmen at 10 percent interest.  She capitalized on the Gold Rush boom, opening laundries in the 1850s and then boarding houses, property investments, matchmaking and mining enterprises, while for years continuing to portray herself as a domestic worker.

Mary identified herself as "a capitalist by profession" in the 1890 United States census; her goal was to make as much money as possible to help as many people as she could.  She funded abolitionist causes and helped extend the Underground Railroad west to California, helped escaped slaves find homes and jobs, and bankrolled civil rights lawsuits.   

Although she faced scandals regarding her relationships with local businessmen and legal set-backs in her court cases that nearly bankrupted her, towards the end of her life the San Francisco Examiner reported that “her deeds of charity are as numerous as the grey hairs on her proud old head.”  In 1976, Memorial Park in San Francisco was established in Pleasant’s memory at the site of her long-gone mansion. 

While Mary Pleasant hid her business acumen and successes, today’s Black women entrepreneurs are highly visible. 

So who are some of the Black women making waves in the business world today?  Look at Forbes inaugural class of pioneering Black entrepreneurs, activists and innovators, the ForbesBLK 50 to discover women who are self-made, philanthropic and innovative! Included in this list of bold face names such as Beyonce, Rihanna, Serena Williams and Shonda Rhimes are names you might not know as well.   

Melissa Bradley is the founder and managing partner of 1863 Ventures, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit business accelerator and venture capital fund focusing on women and people of color.  A Professor of Practice at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, she created 1863 Ventures in 2015 as a student project to bring awareness to local Black entrepreneurship to show the need for policy and funding support. The project grew to regional and then national focus, aiming to generate 100 billion of new wealth by and for the Black community by 2030 and offering funding and mentorship to 5,000 founders and creating 2,000 jobs.  Now transitioned to New Majority Ventures, her company is now a purpose-driven media brand that provides content for and about unseen and under-served communities.

When Thasunda Brown Duckett took the helm of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, a retirement services giant with nearly $1.3 trillion in managed assets, she became its first female chief executive in its 106-year history and one of only two Black female CEOs leading one of the world’s 500 largest companies by revenue, the fourth Black woman in history to serve as a Fortune 500 CEO.

Raised in Arlington, Texas, where her father was a driver for Xerox, and her mother was a teacher, she earned her degree from the University of Houston and an M.B.A. from Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business.

She began her career at Fannie Mae where she worked to increase homeownership among Black and Hispanic Americans.  Ms Duckett was serving as CEO of Chase Consumer Banking, where she oversaw a banking network with more than $600 billion in deposits and 50,000 employees, when she joined TIAA.   She is vocal about her efforts to erase the racial retirement savings gap and under her leadership, TIAA has expanded its mission and launched financial education programs aimed at driving access to retirement planning for all Americans.

Ms Duckett serves on the boards of Nike and non-profits including Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, Sesame Workshop and the National Medal of Honor Museum.   She’s been honored as one of Forbes’ "World's 100 most powerful women" and she was ranked 16th on Fortune's list of Most Powerful Women in 2023.

With only $1,500 to her name, Janice Bryant Howroyd founded a temporary staffing agency, the ActOne Group.  Today it’s the largest woman-minority owned workforce management company founded in the US, a $1.1 billion enterprise with more than 17,000 clients and 2,600 employees in 33 countries, making her the first African-American woman to build and own a billion dollar company.

Ms Howroyd grew up as one of 11 siblings in segregated Tarboro, North Carolina where a high school history teacher taught that Black people were suited for slavery.  It only inspired her entrepreneurial spirit!    She moved to LA where she got a job at Billboard magazine for her brother-in-law, music promoter, consultant and father of the ‘Hot 100’ Tom Noonan.  She met business executives and celebrities and learned top management skills from travel to workplace diversity, assets that helped her launch her staffing company  in 1978.  

With Tom as her first client, she started ‘ACT-1 Group’ at the front office of a Beverly Hills rug shop, paid for through a $900 loan from her mother, focusing on employment services.   ActOne is now a diversified group that provides personnel and recruiting services to different industries, document management and other business services to companies ranging from Fortune 500, local businesses and government agencies.    https://askjbh.com/about/

Forbes isn’t the only one to recognize her.  An author, speaker and philanthropist – she’s donated millions to colleges including the University of Southern California and her Alma mater North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Ms Howroyd was Black Enterprise’s 2022 Woman of the Year and the first-ever BET Honors Entrepreneur of the Year.  President Barack Obama appointed her to his Presidential Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and she’s the Chair of the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard University. 

Billionaire businesswoman Sheila Johnson’s accomplishments span the worlds of hospitality, sports, TV/film, the arts and humanitarian causes.   She’s a TV pioneer, a founding partner of Black Entertainment Television, a film producer whose films have appeared at the Sundance and Tribeca Film festivals. 

Her Sheila C Johnson Foundation provides access to the arts for disadvantaged children in the U.S. and advocates for missing and exploited children worldwide.  Among her many positions Ms Johnson was a Global Ambassador for CARE, a humanitarian organization fighting global poverty and she served as chair of the Board of Governors of Parsons The New School for Design in New York and funded the opening of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center there. 

Ms Johnson is a vice chairman and partner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, a professional sports holding company and she’s the only African American woman to have a principal shareholder stake in three professional sports teams: the Washington Wizards, Capitals and Mystics, for which she serves as governor.

After her notable career as an entrepreneur, producer, philanthropist and sports entertainment mogul, Ms. Johnson set her sights on the world of hospitality and in 2005 she foundedSalamander Hotels & Resorts, a portfolio of luxury properties, resorts and lifestyle businesses in the US and the Caribbean, including Salamander Middleburg, which has achieved the Forbes Five-Star ratings for both its accommodations and spa.  

Ms. Johnson’s memoir, Walk Through Fire, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2023.