Black Elites

Founders. Visionaries. Industry Leaders.

Discover the people building enduring companies and shaping the future of business. Through in-depth interviews, founder stories, business playbooks, and behind-the-scenes insights, Black Elites Profiles explores the journeys, strategies, and lessons of entrepreneurs and executives creating the next generation of category-defining brands.

In Profile

Kevin Caldwell Is Challenging Decades of Transplant Medicine With Bone Marrow From Deceased Donors

For decades, bone marrow transplants have depended on living donors. The problem is that suitable matches are scarce, leaving thousands of patients waiting each year, and many never receive a...

The Unusual Strategy Behind Marques Brownlee’s YouTube Success

Here’s the thing about tech reviewing: access is currency. Early on, device makers hold most of the cards, early units, launch invites, one-on-ones with executives, and embargo access. Play...

The Biggest Bet in AI Hardware: Michael Carbin’s $4.5 Billion Vindication

Two months. That’s how long Unconventional AI existed before it closed one of the largest seed rounds in tech history — $475 million, at a $4.5 billion valuation, for a company that had shipped...

The Hardest Part of Building an App Was Never the Coding. Sheena Allen Lived It.

Sheena Allen’s early edge wasn’t technical skill. She never had that. What she had was a willingness to split two things most people treat as one: knowing what a product should be, and...

Cyrus Harbin: The $500K Blueprint for Non-Technical Tech Talent

Cyrus Harbin used to read poetry to strangers for a living. Before that clicked into a career, he drove for Lyft — no computer science degree, no bootcamp certificate, nothing that looks like a normal...

Stephen Curry’s 3 Rules That Forced the NBA Hall of Fame to Make an Exception

For several years, an unwritten rule existed in the basketball sport. The Hall of Fame was meant for retired guys. Even the absolute biggest stars of the game have to wait till retirement to get...

Leonard Tatum: The Man Who Gave Indies the Weapon Big Tech Hoarded

Back in the mid-2010s, making mobile games wasn’t a business. It was a brawl. Big corporations sat on user data like dragons guarding gold. Independent developers? They were flying blind. No...

How Riana Lynn Turned Doubt Into an AI Platform Powering Food Innovation Across 122 Countries

For decades, the global food industry flew blind. Scattered data. Slow lab testing. Pure intuition. That’s how companies tackled everything from product formulation to food allergies. AI was already...

How Aisha Bowe Went From Being Told College Wasn’t for Her to Becoming a NASA Rocket Scientist

A guidance counsellor once told Aisha Bowe that college might not be for her. Years later, she would become a NASA rocket scientist and one of the few Black women to travel to space.. At that time...