Successful Black Entrepreneurs

APPENDIXCourse Description

African American business leaders successfully have contributed to the growth of the American economy for centuries. This course is not only for Black students, but for every student interested in learning about great business leaders who might be a Black entrepreneur, intrapreneur (entrepreneur in a corporate setting), union leader, or social entrepreneur.

Topics include the entrepreneurship spectrum, leadership, start-up and underserved markets, financial statement analysis, financing for Black entrepreneurs, acquisitions, selling a company, franchising, intrapreneurship, and private equity.

Most of the case studies concentrate on protagonists who are HBS alums, including Otis Gates 1963, the oldest living Black HBS alum who sold his real estate company for over $100 million; Earl Gordon 2008, who purchased a company a few years after graduation; and Amanda Johnson and Kristen Jones Miller 2014, who founded a cosmetics company after graduating. There are also case studies highlighting non-alums; Larry Morse and JoAnn Price, the founders of Fairview Capital, a private equity fund with over $5 billion of assets under management; and John Rogers Jr., the founder of Ariel Investments, the largest Black-owned asset management firm in America.

The course examines the great business opportunities that have emerged from identifying underserved markets of Black consumers, and the unique interplay between, and intersection of, race and successful entrepreneurial ...