Reginald F. Lewis

Reginald F. Lewis grew up in East Baltimore, where by age ten he was running his own newspaper delivery route and by twelve had grown it to over a hundred customers. A three-sport athlete at Dunbar High School, he attended Virginia State University on a football scholarship before becoming the only student in Harvard Law School's history admitted without formally applying, after impressing faculty during a summer legal training programme.

After building a successful law practice specialising in venture capital, Lewis moved into acquisitions, and in 1987 he closed the largest offshore leveraged buyout by an American company in history: the $985 million purchase of Beatrice International Foods, comprising 64 companies across 31 countries. He renamed the company TLC Beatrice International Holdings, and under his leadership it became the first Black-owned and managed business in American history to surpass a billion dollars in annual revenue.

By the early 1990s, Forbes listed Lewis among the 400 richest Americans, the only Black person on the list that year. He died of brain cancer in 1993 at age 50, having established the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation, which funded major grants to Howard University and other institutions supporting education and economic opportunity.