Lawyer William Roderick “Rod” Hamilton was born on October 16, 1947 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Charles Jordan Hamilton Sr. and Geraldine Hamilton. In 1965, Hamilton graduated from Westinghouse High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. degree in politics from Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey in 1969 and his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1975.

After graduating from Princeton University, Hamilton worked as a field representative for the National Urban League in 1970. In 1973, he joined Joe Hill Associates as a deputy director and was later promoted to director. That same year, Hamilton began working as a consultant for the National Office for Social Responsibility. Hamilton then became the vice president of the National Office for Social Responsibility in 1975. He also joined the law firm Webster & Sheffield as an associate in 1976. In 1981, Hamilton was hired as the president of MCA New Ventures, a minority small business enterprise investment company subsidiary of the Music Corporation of America (MCA). He then served as a legal intrapreneur for MCA, Inc. in 1983, vice president of the MCA Recreation Group in 1986, and vice president of legal and business affairs at the MCA Development Company in 1988. Hamilton left MCA, Inc. in 1996 and became vice president of development at Catellus Development in Emeryville, California. In 1999, Hamilton was hired by Isaacson, Miller as a search consultant. He joined the Los Angeles Unified School District in Los Angeles, California in 2001, where he worked as a regional development manager and consultant for almost ten years. In 2011, Hamilton became the principal of WRH Advisors, a consulting firm focused on redeveloping educational facilities, where he served for eight years. Hamilton also worked as a regional program manager for McKissack & McKissack and a subconsultant for Jacobs Engineering in 2019.

Hamilton co-founded the Association of Black Princeton Alumni in 1972. He also served on the boards of the Los Angeles Education Partnership, the Claremont College Consortium, and the SEED School of Los Angeles County.

Hamilton received the inaugural Frederick Douglass Service Award from Princeton University in 1969.

Hamilton lives with his wife, Bonnie Boswell Hamilton, in Los Angeles, California. They have two children, Taylor Whitney Hamilton and Evan Boswell Hamilton.

William Roderick “Rod” Hamilton was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on January 31, 2025.

Pharmaceutical executive and research director Dr. Frank L. Douglas was born on April 30, 1943 in Georgetown, Guyana to Stella Douglas. A Fulbright scholar, he moved to the United States in 1963 and received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1966. He went on to earn his Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry in 1972 and his M.D. degree in 1977 from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Douglas began his residency at the Osler Medical Service at the John Hopkins Medical Institute in Baltimore, Maryland in 1977, and he also worked as a clinical associate at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Douglas was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Public Health Service from 1979 to 1982. He went on to become the director of the Hypertension Clinic, assistant professor in the department of medicine, and member of the committee on clinical pharmacology at the University of Chicago from 1982 to 1984. He was then hired as the executive director of clinical biology at Ciba-Geigy Pharmaceutical Corporation in Summit, New Jersey. He also worked as a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Rutgers University’s Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In 1988, he became senior vice president, director of research, and a member of the pharmaceutical division management committee at Ciba-Geigy. Douglas then moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he worked as the executive vice president of Marion Merrell Dow, Inc. in 1992. Three years later, after a merger of Marion Merrel Dow and Hoechst, a German pharmaceutical company, Douglas became the executive vice president of Hoechst Marion Roussel. From 1999 to 2004, Douglas served as the executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Aventis Pharma AG and Aventis SA. Then, he became a professor of practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, two science departments, and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health, Sciences and Technology until 2007. In 2009, Douglas served as the president and CEO of the Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron, Ohio. He worked at the institute until 2015 when he was hired as the CEO of The Vax Genetics Vaccine Company. He founded Safe Haven Dialogues LLC in 2020.

Douglas served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Battelle Memorial Institute from 2012 to 2018. He also served on the Board of Trustees of BioOhio, the Ohio Medical Corridor Committee between 2011 and 2014, the board of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

Throughout his career, Douglas received numerous awards and honors including a Rock Star of Science Award from the Geoffrey Beene Foundation and GQ Magazine in 2010, an Alumni Special Achievement Award from Weill Cornell Medical College in 2016, and the Dr. Costel Denson '56 Distinguished Alumni Award from Lehigh University in 2019.

Douglas and his wife, Lynnet, have three children: Katrina, Nataki, and Diah Douglas. Douglas resides in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Dr. Frank L. Douglas was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on January 29, 2025 and February 13, 2025.

Music executive and producer Ron Gillyard was born on July 28, 1967, in Miami, Florida to Ora Green and Richard Gillyard. He attended Morehouse College and received his B.A. degree in finance from Howard University in 1990.

In college, Gillyard interned at Uptown Records and the Columbia Jazz Masterpieces project. In 1995, he became the general manager at Bad Boy Entertainment. Then, in 2000, he was hired as the executive vice president of Black Music at J Records before starting as the president of urban music at Interscope Geffen A&M Records in 2003. After leaving his position at Interscope, Gillyard was made a partner and artist manager at Live Nation. He created Gillyard Entertainment LLC, an entertainment management and consulting firm, which managed clients such as BeBe & CeCe Winans and India Arie, in 2007. In 2013, Gillyard became a partner and the chief growth officer of Quantasy Associates, a brand services agency based in Los Angeles, California. During his career, Gillyard produced several films, television series, and musicals including Born for This: The Musical, Maurice Hines: Bring Them Back, Mr. SOUL!, SIDNEY, and SPEAK UP BROTHA!.

Gillyard served on the board of Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, California beginning in 2021. The following year, he joined the music streaming platform Trubify’s board of advisors. Gillyard was also a member of the advisory board for the Boston Arts Academy. He became a board member for Gravity Jack, an augmented and virtual reality technology agency, in 2023.

Throughout his career, Gillyard has received numerous awards and honors including a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary R&B Gospel Album for his role as producer on BeBe & CeCe Winans’ album Still in 2010. Additionally, the documentary Mr. SOUL!, which Gillyard produced, won a Peabody Award for Best Documentary and was shortlisted for the Best Original Song category at the 93rd Academy Awards for the song Show Me Your Soul by composer Robert Glasper and singer Lalah Hathaway.

Gillyard and his wife, Shelly, live in Los Angeles, California. They have three children: Chandler, Chase, and Ryan.

Ron Gillyard was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on September 19, 2024 and January 30, 2025.

Hip hop artist Lana “MC Lyte” Moorer was born on October 11, 1970 in Queens, New York, New York to Constance Moorer and John Crawford. She began performing at age twelve under the name “Sparkle” and recorded her first song in 1984. She graduated from George W. Wingate High School in 1988 before briefly attending Hunter College in New York. However, Moorer soon left to pursue her career in hip hop music.

In 1987, Moorer released her debut single “I Cram to Understand U (Sam)” with First Priority and Atlantic Records. She wrote songs and recorded four albums under these labels, starting with her debut album Lyte as a Rock in 1988, which made her the first solo female rapper to release a full album. Her 1989 album, Eyes on This, was one of the first albums by a female solo rapper to chart on the Billboard 200. In 1989, Moorer joined fellow East Coast Hip Hop artists in KRS One’s “Stop the Violence Movement” to record the song “Self-Destruction.” The group raised money to combat violence in the Black community. Moorer went on to write and record Billboard-charting albums and socially conscious singles, including the anti-addiction track “Poor Georgie” in 1990. This was the first of four MC Lyte songs to chart at number one on the Billboard Hot Rap Songs. In 1993, Moorer wrote and released her single “Ruffneck,” which topped US and international charts and made her the first Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) gold certified female solo rapper. She earned a Grammy nomination for “Best Rap Solo Performance” in 1994. From 1996 to 1998, Moorer was signed with East West Records and released two albums before creating her own record label, Sunni Gyrl Inc., in 1997. She continued to perform at various events such as the Essence Music Festival (2007, 2011, 2016) and at the White House in 2014.

Moorer also expanded her career in other areas of the entertainment industry, including in film (with twenty-one credits), television (forty credits), vocal recordings, and DJing. In 1991, she starred in the off-Broadway play Club XII. From 2011 to 2013, she was the first Black female President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Recording Academy. In addition to her work in entertainment, Moorer is also a philanthropist and founder of the nonprofit Hip Hop Sisters Foundation.

A recipient of multiple accolades, Moorer’s awards include the BET Hip Hop Icon Lifetime Achievement “I Am Hip Hop” Award (2013) and the Trumpet Trail Blazer Award (2019). Moorer obtained three RIAA gold certified records and was labeled a “pioneer of hip hop” by RIAA in 2023. In addition to her musical accolades, Moorer obtained the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard University in 2016.

Moorer resides in Los Angeles, California.

Lana “MC Lyte” Moorer was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on September 19, 2024 and January 29, 2025.

R & B singer Shelly Clark was born on July 27, 1947 in Brooklyn, New York, New York to Lilly Holmes and Eddie Clark. Her musical abilities were discovered at age two. Growing up, Clark and her brother Ilya were known as “The Clark Kids”, a singing/dancing duo. Also, in 1954, Clark was cast in the Broadway production of House of Flowers, where she worked alongside performers such Diahann Carroll and Pearl Bailey. Clark was the youngest singer to perform at the Apollo Theater. In 1957, the Clark Kids were signed to Columbia Records and released their album Calypso Songs for Children. The Clark Kids also toured with the 1957 Cotton Club Revue alongside Cab Calloway. Clark graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1965. While in high school, she took singing classes at the University of Southern California.

In 1966, Clark was cast as an “Ikette” in the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. In 1967, she served as the opening dance act for the Little Richard Revue. She also worked as a session/backup vocalist for various artists such as Dusty Springfield and Tommy Roe. In 1968, Clark sang on The Andy Williams Show alongside Carolyn Willis and Edna Wright. This led to the trio being signed by Hot Wax Records as R&B group “Honey Cone.” In 1969, Honey Cone released their first single, “While You’re Out Looking for Sugar.” The group then released four albums: Take Me with You (1970), Sweet Replies (1971), Soulful Tapestry (1971), and Love, Peace and Soul (1972). Their songs “Want Ads” (1971) and “Stick Up” (1972) were certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In 1971, “Want Ads” rose to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard R&B singles charts. That same year, Honey Cone was one of the first musical acts to appear on the television show Soul Train. Honey Cone had four top forty Billboard Hot 100 hits and nine top four Billboard R&B hits before they disbanded in 1973.

Clark went on to have a career in other areas of the entertainment industry. In 1978, she was the star of the television show Hot City Disco. She also worked as a staff coordinator for Eddie Murphy Television from the mid-1980s to 1989. Clark co-founded the W&W Talent Agency and in 2010, she co-founded the non-profit, The Verdine White Performing Arts Center (VWPAC) alongside her husband Verdine White. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Clark began a podcast called That’s My Story. In 2023, she embarked on a Honey Cone reunion tour.

Clark has received numerous accolades including the National Association of Radio Television and Radio Announcers’ “Best Female Vocal Group” in 1970, the Heroes and Legends Award in 2016, and the National Rhythm and Blues Music Society “Unsung Heroine Award” in 2016. In 2021, she and Honey Cone were inducted into the Soul Music Hall of Fame. Clark married bassist for Earth, Wind & Fire Verdine White in 1980. They have one son and a granddaughter. They reside in California.

Shelly Clark was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on September 18, 2024 and January 29, 2025.

Singer Toshi Reagon was born on January 27, 1964, in Atlanta, Georgia to Bernice Johnson Reagon and Cordell Reagon. Reagon graduated from the Sandy Spring Friends School in Sandy Spring, Maryland.

Reagon began her career in 1978 performing as a singer and guitarist. In 1990, she then joined Lenny Kravitz as an opener for his first world tour. She also performed at numerous venues nationally and internationally including Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, and the Paris Opera House. In 1990, Reagon launched her own band, BIGLovely, and, that same year, she released her debut album, Justice. Numerous albums would follow including Africans in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery with various artists including her mother, Sweet Honey in the Rock’s Bernice Johnson Reagon, in 2001, TOSHI in 2002, and SpiritLand in 2018. Reagon served as a producer for numerous albums from her mother’s a cappella ensemble, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and collaborated with her mother to create numerous operas including The Temptation of St. Anthony in 2003, Zinnias: The Life of Clementine Hunter in 2013, and a rock opera adaptation of Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower in 2017. Reagon founded the Word*Rock*& Sword Music Festival in New York City in 2011. That same year, Reagon joined the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as a curator for the Women’s Jazz Festival, where she worked for four years. Reagon also served as the music director and designer for the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra’s “Deep Roots of Rock n’ Roll” in 2014 and as a co-director for “Celebrate the Great Women of Blues & Jazz” in 2016.

During her career, Reagon has held numerous artist fellowships and residencies including the Art of Change Fellowship at the Ford Foundation in 2015, the Andrew W. Mellon DisTIL Fellowship in 2017, the United States Artist Fellowship in 2018, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Creative Futures Artist Residency at Carolina Performing Arts in 2019, and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Artist Residency from 2020 to 2022.

Reagon has also received numerous awards and honors including the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Award for Music Composition in 2004, the Black Lily Music and Film Festival Award for Outstanding Performance in 2007, the OutMusic Heritage Award in 2010, the Religion and the Arts Award from the American Academy of Religion in 2021, the Herb Alpert Award in Music in 2021, and the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) Award of Merit for Achievement in the Performing Arts in 2021.

Toshi Reagon was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on February 15, 2023.

Producer and author Crystal McCrary McGuire was born on October 24, 1969, in Detroit, Michigan. McCrary McGuire received her B.A. degree in English language and literature from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1991 and her J.D. degree from the New York University School of Law in New York City, New York in 1995.

After graduating from law school, McCrary McGuire joined Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison as a legal associate in entertainment law. McCrary McGuire left law in 1997 to focus on being a full-time author. McCrary McGuire collaborated with Rita Ewing to write Home-court Advantage, a novel about the wives of professional basketball players published in 1998 by William Morrow Publishing, that became a New York Times bestseller. McCrary McGuire then worked with Tonya Lewis Lee on Gotham Diaries, another New York Times bestselling novel published by Hyperion in 2004. In 2012, McCrary McGuire published Inspiration: Profiles of Black Women Changing Our World with co-author Nathan Hale Williams and photographer Lauri Lyons through Stewart, Tabori, and Chang publishing. In addition, McCrary McGuire made appearances as a legal analyst on networks such as CNN, Court TV, the Fox News Channel, and The View. McCrary McGuire made her debut as a producer on the independent film Dirty Laundry, directed by Maurice Jamal in 2006. Dirty Laundry received the Blockbuster Award for Best U.S. Feature at the American Black Film Festival in 2006 and a GLAAD Media Award Nomination in 2008. McCrary McGuire also worked as a producer for Black Entertainment Television (BET). In 2008, McCrary McGuire founded Crystal McCrary Media and Get to Yes Productions.

McCrary McGuire served on the advisory board of JumpStart, the board of directors for Hyperion Books (now Hachette Books), and the board of directors for the New 42nd Street.

McCrary McGuire received numerous awards and honors including the Blackboard Fiction Book of the Year Award from Blackboard: African American Best Sellers for Gotham Diaries in 2005 and a feature on Crain’s New York Business’ “40 Under 40” list in 2007.

McCrary McGuire lives in New York City, New York with her husband, Raymond J. McGuire. They have three children: Cole, Ella, and Leo.

Crystal McCrary McGuire was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on February 15, 2023.

Allergist and immunologist Dr. Anne L. Maitland was born on January 4, 1964, in New York City, New York, to Dr. Leo C. Maitland and Carolyn Swann. Maitland received her B.S. degree in general biology/biological sciences from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She also earned both her M.D. degree and her Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1998.

Following her graduation from the University of Pennsylvania, Maitland completed her residency in internal medicine, allergic and clinical immunology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts in 2000 and a fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City in 2002. In 2005, Maitland joined the National Medical Association as an allergy and immunology faculty member. Maitland was then hired in 2007 by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital as an allergy and immunology physician, where she worked for over fifteen years. During this period, Maitland began working as the medical director of Comprehensive Allergy & Asthma Care, PLLC in Tarrytown, New York, in 2012. Maitland held this role for over ten years. Beginning in 2018, Maitland served as an allergy and immunology consultant for American Well for four years. After leaving American Well, Maitland became a part-time allergy and immunology specialist for the Metrodora Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2022.

Maitland served as a fellow of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) and as a member of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI), where she also held the position of chair of the Committee for the Underserved and chairperson of Mast Cell Disorders.

Throughout her career, Maitland received numerous awards and honors including a feature on the “America’s Top 21 Women’s Doctors” list on Lifescript.com in 2009, the New York Times’ Super Doctors Award in 2011, Castle Connolly’s Top Doctors list in 2018, numerous features on Westchester Magazine’s “Top Doctors” list, the Castle Connolly’s Exceptional Woman in Medicine Award in 2019, and the Top Doctors New York Area Metro digital guide recognition.

Dr. Anne L. Maitland was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on February 13, 2023.