American Express. Xerox. Sam’s Club. McDonald’s. What do these iconic American companies, with globally recognized American brands, have in common? Each of these multinational corporations has an African American CEO, respectively: Kenneth I. Chenault, Ursula Burns, Rosalind G. Brewer, and Don Thompson. You’ll find these outstanding leaders among others on our latest list of the 100 Most Powerful Black Executives in Corporate America, featured in this issue.
It’s easy to forget that, not so long ago, the prospect of an African American CEO at a multinational corporation was as remote as a black president in the White House–especially now that both are realities today. In February 1988, when we published our first list of top black corporate executives, the list comprised just 25 people–there were no CEOs of large public companies, and no women–many of whom were not even aware of each other’s existence before we published that issue. Notables on that first list: AARP CEO A. Barry Rand, who was then president of Xerox’s U.S. Marketing Group and would go on to become the CEO of Avis Group Holdings; recent GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who was then president of Godfather’s Pizza; and Chenault, then executive vice president and general manager of AMEX’s Platinum Card/Gold Card division and, at 36, the youngest executive on the list.
Back then, with African
Americans having experienced the historic 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns of Rev. Jesse Jackson, the editors and executives of Black Enterprise would debate which barrier to racial progress would take the longest to buckle: the one blocking the CEO’s office or the one blocking the Oval Office. Now that the(Continued on next page)
concrete ceilings to both symbolic seats of power have been opened (for the record, the former breakthrough came first, when Franklin Raines was named CEO of Fannie Mae in 1999, making him the first black CEO of one of the country’s top 500 publicly traded companies), some might think that the underrepresentation of African Americans at all levels of corporate America is no longer an issue. Some may even believe that lists such as the one in this issue are no longer necessary, or even relevant.
Nothing could be further from the truth. African Americans still represent only about 2% of executives at the top echelons of the nation’s leading 500 companies. The lack of representation is more apparent when you look at which executives are included in a company’s proxy statement. You’ll be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of African Americans on any corporation’s executive leadership team. So while it’s true that there are more black executives making their mark in senior-level corporate positions than ever before, it also remains true, to paraphrase my friend Rev. Al Sharpton, that corporate America is like the Rocky Mountains–the higher you climb, the whiter it gets.
The progress of African American executive talent in corporate America is undeniable, as evidenced by our list of top black corporate leaders, which has grown from the inaugural 25 to 100 talented men and women drawn from a pool of several hundred candidates. It’s great to be able to list 100, but it should be 1,000, with 100 CEOs. The achievements of the executives in this issue, and our spotlighting them, will go a long way toward bringing that reality to fruition.