EARL G. GRAVES SR.

 As founder and publisher of BLACK ENTERPRISE, this quintessential entrepreneur created a vehicle to provide information and advocacy to enable three generations of African Americans to build wealth through business ownership, career advancement, and money management. Driven by that mission, Graves became a

trailblazing entrepreneur in his own right, building Black Enterprise from a single-magazine publishing company to a diversi-fied multimedia business spreading the message of financial empowerment to more than 6 million African Americans through print, digital, broadcast, and live-event platforms. Throughout the 1990s, he also partnered with PepsiCo and basketball superstar-cum-entre-preneur Earvin “Magic” Johnson to own and operate another BE 100s company, Pepsi-Cola of Washington, D.C. L.P., which become the largest Black-owned Pepsi bottling franchise.