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

How Shonda Rhimes Turned Fear Into One of Hollywood’s Greatest Success Stories

Nobody expected a first-time television creator to reshape Hollywood. Back in the early 2000s, network TV ran on familiar formulas. Writers felt pressure to deliver a hit, and that pressure usually...

Bozoma Saint John Built Her Career by Taking On the Toughest Challenges

Most people in corporate America play it safe. You protect the brand that’s already winning. You don’t volunteer for the mess. Bozoma Saint John did the opposite, over and over. She helped...

What Rich Paul Understood About Player Empowerment Before the Sports Industry Did

For decades, sports worked on an unwritten rule: teams held the power, players took what they were offered. Free agency loosened that grip a little, sure. But most agents still just fought for bigger...

Instead of Reinventing Lowe’s, Marvin Ellison Fixed the Fundamentals 

When Ellison stepped in as CEO back in July 2018, Lowe’s was making money, but it was all over the place. Home Depot was beating them on sales. Core retail tech was falling behind. Activist investors...

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...