Black Entrepreneur and Executive Profiles

Tidjane Thiam

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:27:00 -0400

Tidjane Thiam has been an executive director of Prudential and Group Chief Financial Officer since March 2008. He was previously Chief Executive Officer, Europe at Aviva, where he also held successively the positions of Group Strategy and Development Director and Managing Director, Aviva International. Prior to that, Tidjane was a partner with McKinsey & Company in France and one of the leaders of their Financial Institutions practice, focusing on insurance companies and banks. Earlier in his career, he spent a number of years in Africa where he was Chief Executive and then Chairman of the National Bureau for Technical Studies and Development in Cote d'Ivoire and a cabinet member as Minister of Planning and Development. He is a non-executive director of Arkema in France, a member of the Council of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London and a sponsor of Opportunity International, a charity focusing on microfinance in developing countries.

Anne Sempowski Ward

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:06:00 -0400

Anne Sempowski Ward, president and COO of Johnson Publishing Company, the company founded by John H. Johnson.

As president and COO of Fashion Fair Cosmetics (FFC), Ward reorganized the business for growth, developed a myriad of new strategies, launched new product innovation and re-energized the cosmetics team for the future.

Prior to joining FFC, Ward was assistant vice president of African-American Marketing for the Coca-Cola Company. She was responsible for implementing all business development strategies and programs to build market share with African-American consumers across all major Coca-Cola brands, including Coke, Sprite, Powerade, Dasani and Minute Maid.

Ward also spent more than a decade at Procter & Gamble, where she led several brands and categories, including Pampers, Always, Tampax and hair care. She had a lead role in the launch of significant African-American marketing campaigns and created the âTotal Youâ beauty platform across P&Gâs largest beauty brands.

The Detroit native received her Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from Duke University. She also earned a Global MBA degree from Duke Universityâs Fuqua School of Business.

An active member of the civic and business communities, Ward has received numerous acknowledgements for her work. She has been recognized as a YMCA Black Achiever, YWCA Rising Star, âTop Black Executive in a Major Corporationâ as well a âWoman at the Topâ by EBONY magazine. She was also the youngest and first African-American trustee on the P&G Fund, the entity responsible for all of P&Gâs philanthropic giving.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A practicing physician with business credentials and hands-on experience developing national health policy, she was drawn to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation by the opportunity, as she puts it, to âalter the trajectory and to push society to change for the better.â

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is America's largest philanthropy devoted to health and health care. Lavizzo-Mourey is the first woman and the first African-American to head the Foundation, which has an endowment of about $10 billion and distributes more than $400 million a year. In 2007 the foundation made its largest investment to date by pledging $500 million over the next five years to combat childhood obesity.

Under Lavizzo-Moureyâs leadership, the Foundation has restructured its strategic investments to target a set of high-impact priorities, among them:

    * Designing a more effective, performance-driven, patient-centered health system.
    * Improving the quality and safety of patient care.
    * Strengthening state and local public health systems.
    * Halting the rise in childhood obesity by 2015.
    * Easing the crisis in the nursing profession.
    * Covering the uninsured.
    * Developing the next generation of health leaders and policy-makers.

Lavizzo-Mourey was a leader in academic medicine, government service and her medical specialty of geriatrics before joining RWJF in 2001 as senior vice president and director of the health care group. Previously, at the University of Pennsylvania, she was the Sylvan Eisman Professor of medicine and health care systems and director of Pennâs Institute on Aging. In Washington, D.C., she was deputy administrator of what is now the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of The National Academies.

Raised in Seattle by physician parents, Lavizzo-Mourey earned a medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston; was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania; and trained in geriatrics at Penn. Always a physician as well as an agent for wide-scale social change, she still treats patients at a community health clinic in New Brunswick, N.J. She and her husband of 30 years have two adult children.

Adriane M. Brown

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:50:00 -0400

Adriane M. Brown is President and CEO of Honeywell Transportation Systems, a position she was appointed to in January 2005. Headquartered in Torrance, California, Honeywell Transportation Systems has annual revenue of $4.5 billion and consists of Honeywell Turbo Technologies and Honeywell Consumer Products Group.

Brown most recently served as Vice President and General Manager of Honeywell Engine Systems & Accessories. She joined Honeywell in 1999 as Vice President and General Manager of Aircraft Landing Systems. Prior to that, she was Vice President and General Manager of the Environmental Products Division for Corning Inc. During the last five of her 19 years at Corning, she managed its Automotive Products business.Brown earned her Bachelor's degree in Environmental Health from Old Dominion University and Masterâs degree in Management, as a Sloan Fellow, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 2005, Brown was named to Automotive News' list of 100 leading women in the North American automotive industry. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Jobs for Americaâs Graduates, and is a member of the Executive Leadership Council, and the Arizona Women's Forum, a chapter of the International Women's Forum.

Tyler Perry

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:52:23 -0400

Tyler Perry is the president and founder of The Tyler Perry Company Inc., (Tyler Perry Studios). He is best known as a writer, director and actor in films, television and theatre.

Mr.Perry was born Emmitt R. Perry, Jr. in New Orleans, one of four children. Perry changed his first name to Tyler because of his troubled relationship with his father.

Mr.Perry who once lived in his car has become the most successful black producer of film and theatre in the U.S.

Perry's rags-to-riches tale is astonishing and inspirational. His younger days were troubled, and he suffered from endless abuse growing up. The dejection and rejection caused Perry to do some soul-searching as an adult.

In 1992, in an effort to find catharsis for his own childhood pain, and inspired by Oprah Winfrey to put it down on paper, he wrote a series of letters to himself. Those letters would be transformed into his first hit musical, "I Know I've Been Changed." Perry's humble spirit and his faith in God kept him focused. He believed that God was calling him to share his story with as many people as possible so that he might help others. Perry learned real forgiveness, deep down inside--a forgiveness that leads to success in the soul. He chose the stage life as a vehicle, and this new life has been a learning process, full of hard work. But now Perry has reached out to millions across the country and in doing so has tremendously altered how people perceive and attend urban theatre.

In 2005, Tyler Perry took the nation by storm when the movie he wrote, produced, and starred in, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman", opened #1 at the box office. In its first week on sale, the DVD sold nearly 2.5 million copies. At the same time, Perry was starring nightly across the country in a sold-out stage show he'd also written, produced and scored--"Madea Goes to Jail"--even as another one of his productions, "Meet the Browns," was touring nationally. Together, the two productions sold out more than 500 shows in theatres from coast to coast. Every week in 2005, 35,000 people saw a Tyler Perry production.

Since making his film debut with "Diary of a Mad Black Woman", Tyler Perry has become a multimedia phenomenon with a roster of hugely successful film, stage, television, and book projects.

Perry's first two films both debuted at number one at the North American box office and the combined sales of his nine DVDs have sold over 11 million units.

Perry's first book, "Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Life and Love" debuted at #1 on the New York Times' hardcover nonfiction bestseller list and remained in the Top 10 for eight weeks.

Most recently he created and produced 10 episodes of the first-run syndicated comedy series, "House of Payne."