Black people have always faced major barriers to investing and money in general, both in the United States and other nations. These barriers, which have prevented people of color from advancing, include racism in the insurance business and loan discrimination in the United States, among others. Nonetheless, despite these challenges, there has also been a long history of influential Black investors and financiers.
Some are famous for their ground-breaking feats at a time when Black people working in finance was scarce, while others are renowned for their outstanding achievements inside the sector. They are all renowned for their knowledge and power, both inside the field and outside of it.
Below are the biographies of ten outstanding Black people (in no particular order).
Robert F. Smith
Robert F. Smith established Vista Equity Partners in 2000 with the goal of investing in software and technology businesses that seek to advance economic fairness.
With the help of Smith’s innovative investment strategy, which combines a strong social conscience with strict risk management, Vista Equity Partners has expanded to now oversee more than $94 billion in assets. Only corporate software, data, and technology-enabled businesses are the focus of Vista’s investments, which total more than 80 firms. 23
Smith, a 1964 Colorado native, completed a degree in chemical engineering at Cornell University before receiving an honors MBA from Columbia Management School. Prior to leaving The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) in 2000, he began working for the company in 1994 and was originally tasked with mergers and acquisitions.
Smith is a skilled publicist. He gained national attention in 2019 by pledging to pay off the student loans of Morehouse College’s graduating class, which also raised the visibility of Vista Equity. Smith is the wealthiest Black individual in America, with a net worth of more than $8 billion, according to Forbes. 4 The Giving Promise, which requires signatories to pledge to donate the bulk of their fortune to charitable organizations, was initially signed by Smith, the first African American.
John W. Rogers Jr.
Ariel Investments was founded by John W. Rogers Jr., who also serves as its chairman, co-CEO, and chief investment officer. The biggest minority-run mutual fund company in the United States, Ariel Investments, has $17.8 billion in assets under management (AUM) as of March 31, 2022.
In accordance with Rogers’ biography, he became passionate about investing at the age of 12 when his father started giving him stocks for his birthday and Christmas. Rogers launched Ariel Investments in 1983 to concentrate on value investing in small- and medium-sized businesses after studying in economics at Princeton University and working as a stockbroker for William Blair for two years.
Rogers serves as the vice chair on the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago and is a member of the boards of directors of several corporations, including McDonald’s Inc. (MCD) and Nike Inc. (NKE). He received the Woodrow Wilson Prize in 2008, which is given annually to a Princeton alumnus whose professional life best exemplifies a dedication to public service. With the election of then-President Barack Obama, Rogers also served as co-chair for the Presidential Inauguration Committee in 2009, and he is a director of the Barack Obama Foundation.
Daymond John
Daymond John had to work hard to succeed. He was born in New York City in 1969 into extremely humble circumstances and suffered with dyslexia . 8 Like did many of the Black investors on our list, John got started early with a few profitable businesses while still in elementary and high school.
At the age of 23, John created the apparel company FUBU (an abbreviation for “for us, by us”) with three boyhood friends. John used an unconventional marketing tactic to promote the company, giving out clothing to celebrities like LL Cool J, NSYNC, and Snoop Dogg in exchange for exposure in their videos and paparazzi photos.
This method helped the business become incredibly successful. by June 2022. The popularity of the clothing line started to decline after more than a decade of success, and John began to explore for new prospects. FUBU is a global brand with more than $6 billion in worldwide sales.
In the TV program “Shark Tank,” he discovered his subsequent position, the one that would propel him to national stardom. John has made millions of dollars as an angel investor in start-up businesses that have been featured on the program. He has an uncanny knack for spotting budding businesses and successful entrepreneurs. Due to his support of ground-breaking products including the Comfortable Original blanket, Bubba’s Q boneless ribs, and the Bombas sock firm, John has become one of the show’s most successful investors.
John is now the CEO of the Shark Group, a brand consulting and speaking company, in addition to working on the program.
Travers J. Bell Jr.
The brief life of visionary investor Travers J. Bell Jr. was full with financial success. Bell, who was born in 1941 into a Chicago family that was both destitute and aspirational, spent several hours each day in school. During a period when few Black people attended these esteemed schools, he finally received degrees from the New York Institute of Finance and Washington University in St. Louis.
Bell began his career as a messenger at the Midwest brokerage Dempsey-Tegeler & Co., where he later rose to the position of vice president before going it alone.
In 1971, he helped co-found Daniels & Bell, the first Black-owned investment company listed on the NYSE. The company started off with only $175,000 in money, but thanks to a string of wise (and sometimes brutal) investment choices, this amount quickly increased.
Bell made it his mission to support the neighborhood. Because few institutional investors were interested in these chances, his company specialized in underwriting securities for developing minority-owned firms and municipal bonds for tiny Southern communities. Bell discovered a lucrative market while simultaneously promoting growth in previously underdeveloped and neglected regions of the nation by supporting businesses, people, and towns that had been disregarded by a mostly white Wall Street.
Bell, who died of a heart attack in 1988 at the age of 46, left behind a company with a $15 million market value.
Gregory S. Bell
Gregory S. Bell, was a writer for Black Enterprise and the author of the book In the Black: A History of African Americans on Wall Street, carries on his father’s tradition, nevertheless. Anybody interested in the illuminating, challenging, and often ignored history of Black investors and businesspeople in the United States must read this book.
Suzanne Shank
Municipal bond underwriting has almost entirely been reinvented by Suzanne Shank. Shank, like the other investors on this list, began his career studying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), graduating from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a B.S. in civil engineering before obtaining an MBA in finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Shank acquired experience at many Wall Street businesses after graduating from Wharton before launching her own company. She co-founded Siebert Cisneros Shank & Co. in 1996, and the company saw a rapid climb, becoming the first MWBE to rank among the top 10 underwriters of U.S. municipal bonds.
In order to create Siebert Williams Shank, Shank managed the 2019 merger of the company she created (and served as chairwoman and CEO of) with Williams Capital Group. With Shank as president and CEO, this company has grown to be a giant in the municipal underwriting sector and now employs some of the most skilled professionals in the field. 16
Shank has also made a point of encouraging and assisting the next generation of Black investors. She works on granting access to underrepresented minorities as a member of the Spelman College Board of Trustees and the Graduate Advisory Board at Wharton.
Mellody Hobson
From an early age, Mellody Hobson seemed to have been predestined for greatness. She attended Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and graduated with honors after an exceptional early academic career. She has since been a consistent and committed contributor for many trade journals, most notably Black Enterprise, to which she has written a number of essays alongside her commercial career.
Prior to DreamWorks Animation’s sale to NBCUniversal, a Comcast affiliate, Hobson held the role of chair of the board and quickly advanced through a variety of executive positions in IT and entertainment companies (CMCSA). Because of her position and her notoriety in the investment community generally, Time magazine named her one of the world’s top 100 most important people in 2015.
Hobson has now begun to concentrate solely on investing. She presently serves as co-CEO and president of Ariel Investments, one of the biggest minority-owned investment organizations in the country and a mutual fund company that specializes in value investing with small and medium-sized businesses. Moreover, Hobson has added her leadership to a number of company boards. She was named Starbucks’ board chair in March 2021. 21
Hobson is also noteworthy for how much she values loyalty in her business ties. John W. Rogers, with whom she co-founded the business and had a long working relationship, is her co-CEO at Ariel. 22 Hobson, like Rogers, is a winner of Princeton University’s top distinction, the Woodrow Wilson Award.
Kevin Cohee
Kevin Cohee is one of those exceptional investors who really believes in the ability of the market to help the underprivileged escape poverty. The career of Cohee serves as evidence of what is possible in that respect.
Cohee acquired a controlling stake in Boston Bank of Commerce and was named its CEO in 1996 after working as an investor and businessman at Salomon Brothers. Yet by this time, it was obvious that he intended to build a different kind of bank—one that was as concerned with social capital as it was with shareholder returns.
Cohee bought a number of neighborhood banks around the nation when he was working at Boston Bank of Commerce. He intentionally selected these banks and thoroughly integrated them into the management structure because of their moral lending philosophy. He then changed the name of his brand-new organization to OneUnited Bank and gave it a new purpose: to make it simpler for underserved areas to obtain money. 24
The Cohee model has been effective. OneUnited Bank, which is now the biggest bank owned by African Americans, has assisted thousands of Black-owned companies in gaining access to funding that they would have otherwise found challenging to get.
Mark Mason
In 2020, Mark Mason, the chief financial officer (CFO) of Citigroup Inc. (C), gained widespread public recognition as one of the first influential figures in the financial sector to speak out in public about George Floyd’s murder. His passionate and impactful blog post on the Citi blog spoke out against the unfairness and endemic racism in the United States. 26
Despite the fact that this most recent criticism made Mason a household name, he has been a significant player in the financial industry for nearly two decades. He obtained an MBA from Harvard Business School after completing his studies at Howard University, where he now serves as a trustee.
Mason started working at Citibank in 2001 and advanced swiftly. Prior to becoming the bank’s CFO, he held a variety of executive-level roles within the bank and its affiliated organizations over the previous 20 years, including CFO of Citi’s Institutional Clients Group, which offers cash and trade solutions to 90% of Global Fortune 500 companies.
Richard L. Goings
Goings was an early pioneer for African Americans on Wall Street, much like Travers J. Bell Jr. Goings made Shearson, Hammill & Co.’s investment division in Harlem the company’s most lucrative division after entering, and he also became the first Black brokerage manager at a NYSE company. Goings next paid $250,000 for a seat on the NYSE and acquired the Harlem branch, renaming it First Harlem Securities. 30
Goings came from quite modest origins and accomplished all of this. He shared Daymond John’s dyslexia struggles and was born into a large household of six children during the Great Depression. Goings played professional football until suffering a knee injury that interrupted his career, and after serving in the U.S. Air Force, he finally graduated with a B.A. from Xavier University. He then started working as an over-the-counter trader at J.W. Kaufmann & Co. in 1960.
Goings is a talented writer and editor. He founded Essence magazine and served as its first chairman. He also composed a book-length poetry on Black American history called The Children of Children Keep Coming: An Epic Griotsong, which Romare Bearden illustrated. 30 Goings oversaw the Studio Museum in Harlem, where Bearden and Goings first met.
Robert B. Smith
Smith Graham Investment Advisors, a $6 billion institutional investment manager with offices in Houston, is led by Gerald B. Smith as chairman and CEO.
Smith launched Smith Graham in 1990, and since then, he has built it into one of the biggest minority-owned investment management businesses in the country. Smith, a founding member of the New York Futures Exchange with more than 40 years of expertise in the financial sector, collaborated with institutional investors to use financial futures to manage interest rate risk.
Smith is a board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which he joined in 2018. Before to that, from 2011 to 2016, he was a member of the board of the Houston Branch.
34 In addition, Smith serves as the chair of the investment committee for New York Life Insurance Company’s board of directors, the chair of the audit committee for Eaton PLC’s board of directors, and, until his retirement, he served on the board of trustees and the investment oversight committee for The Charles Schwab Family of Funds.
The Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture was founded by Smith and his wife, Anita.
He earned a BBA in finance from Texas Southern University. In order to assist young people of color compete more successfully in the business world, Smith founded the Gerald B. Smith Center for Entrepreneurship and Executive Development at his alma university, where he also earned an honorary doctorate degree in 2012.
Who Among Black Investors Has the Most Wealth?
The chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, Robert F. Smith, is largely considered as the richest Black investor. He also founded the company. Smith is ranked 86th on the 2022 Forbes 400 list with a $8 billion net worth, according to Forbes.
The Ariel-Schwab Black Investor Survey: What Is It?
For more than 20 years, the Ariel-Schwab Black Investor Survey has examined the views and practices of Black and White Americans with regard to saving and investing. Helical Research conducted the study in April 2022 on behalf of Charles Schwab, a major player in the market, and Ariel Investments, the biggest minority-owned mutual fund company in the United States.
What Were the Main Results of the Ariel-Schwab Black Investor Study for 2020?
The deep-seated difference in stock market involvement between Black Americans and White Americans at comparable income levels remains, with 55% and 71%, respectively, according to the 2020 Ariel-Schwab study. Despite the fact that Black Americans’ stock market involvement rate is at its lowest point in the survey’s more than 20-year history, the participation gap is fast reducing among younger generations. Three times as many Black investors as White investors reported investing for the first time in 2020 (15% vs. 5%), driving the increase in stock market participation among Black Americans under the age of 40 to 63%, matching that of their white counterparts.
the conclusion
These investors all serve as role models, and not only for their accomplishments in their respective fields. Their accomplishments are all the more impressive given the challenges they overcame in a culture where there are still significant racial pay discrepancies.
Additionally, many of the investors on this list are actively utilizing their success to enhance the prospects for the following generation, whether it be by providing funding to Black-owned businesses, engaging in racial justice investing, or increasing the racial diversity within their own institutions. It seems that many of the Black investors who are most successful are also the ones who have the biggest social consciences.