Business school professor James I. Cash, Jr. was born on October 25, 1947 in Fort Worth, Texas to Juanita Maurine Beaty and James I. Cash, Sr. He received his B.S. degree in mathematics in 1969 from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. He earned his M.S. degree in computer science in 1974 from the Purdue University Graduate School of Mathematical Science and his Ph.D. degree in information systems management in 1976 from the Purdue University Krannert Graduate School of Management in West Lafayette, Indiana.

After receiving his Ph.D. degree, Cash was hired as an assistant professor of business administration by Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work focused on information technology. He was appointed to the U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on Transnational Enterprises in 1976. In 1985, Cash became the first tenured African American professor at Harvard Business School. For more than twenty-five years at Harvard Business School, Cash taught in all its major programs: the M.B.A. program, the program for management development, the program for global leadership, and the advanced management program. In 1998, Cash was named the Harvard Business School James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration.

Cash is the author of numerous scholarly articles and books, including Building the Information-Age Organization: Structure, Control, and Information Technologies (1994), Instructors Manual for Corporate Information Systems Management (1992), and Corporate Information Systems Management: Issues Facing Senior Executives. Cash retired from Harvard Business School in 2003 and founded his professional development firm, The Cash Catalyst LLC, in 2011. He became the co-owner of the Boston Celtics beginning in 2003.

Cash has served on many corporate boards throughout his career including Microsoft Corporation, Walmart, General Electric, Sprint, State Street Corporation, and The Chubb Ltd. He also served on the advisory board for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the board of trustees of the National Association of Basketball Coaches Foundation, the Harlem Children’s Zone, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Cash has been the recipient of many awards and honors, including the United Negro College Fund Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023; Trailblazer Award from the Grain Thought Leaders Atrium in 2017; the Greenhill Award from Harvard Business School in 2003; and the John S. Day Award from the Purdue University Krannert School of Business in 1994. His alma mater, Texas Christian University, unveiled a statue in his honor in 2021 and awarded him an Honorary Doctorate the following year. Harvard Business School re-named the Glass House the Cash House for him in 2022. It is the only building named in honor of an African American on Harvard Business School’s campus.

Cash lives with his wife, Clemmie L. Warren, in Sarasota, Florida. They have two adult children, Tari Renae Cash and Derek Cash.

Cash was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on January 5, 2023.

Business school professor Linda A. Hill was born on July 20, 1956, in Wheeling, West Virginia to Lillian Gordon Hill and Clifford Hill Sr. She received her B.A. degree in psychology in 1977 from Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She received her M.A. degree in educational psychology in 1979 and her Ph.D. degree in behavioral sciences in 1983, both from the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois.

After receiving her Ph.D. degree, Hill was granted a postdoctoral fellowship in 1983 at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was hired as an assistant professor in 1984 with a focus on leadership development, innovation, and the implementation of global strategies. In 1992, Hill wrote her first book Becoming a Manager: Mastery of a New Identity, which was later followed by Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership (2003). She has authored numerous scholarly articles and books on leadership, including Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation (2014) and Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader (2011). In 2016, Hill co-founded the leadership research and development firm Paradox Strategies in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is Harvard Business School’s Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration as well as the faculty chair of the Harvard Business School Leadership Initiative.

Hill has served on the boards of directors for Cooper Industries (later Eaton Corporation), State Street Corporation, and Relay Therapeutics. She has also served boards of numerous non-profit organizations and institutions, such as The Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Citizens Initiative, Inc., the ArtCenter College of Design, Bryn Mawr College, and Harvard Business Publishing since 2010. She has chaired many Harvard Business School executive education programs, including the High Potentials Leadership Program, Leading in the Digital Era, and Leading and Building a Culture of Innovation.

Hill has received multiple awards and honors, including the Innovation Award from Thinkers50 in 2015, the Warren Bennis Prize for Excellence in Leadership in 2015, and the 2015 Axiom Business Book Award for Collective Genius (2014), which was also named to the inaugural Thinkers50 Booklist 10 Management Classics for 2022. Also in 2022, Hill’s article “Becoming the Boss” (published in 2007), was selected as one of the most influential and innovative articles from Harvard Business Review’s first hundred years.

Hill and her husband, Roger Breitbart, live in Boston, Massachusetts. They have an adult son named Jonathan.

Linda A. Hill was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on December 19, 2022.

Activist DeRay Mckesson was born on July 9, 1985, in Baltimore, Maryland to Joan Adams and Calvin Mckesson. He received his B.A. degree in government and legal studies in 2007 from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

After receiving his B.A. degree, Mckesson was hired by Teach For America as a teacher assigned to Douglass Academy VIII in Brooklyn, New York, where he taught sixth grade math for two years. From 2008 to 2009, he worked as a senior advisor to the program director for the Countee Cullen Community Center of the Harlem Children’s Zone in Harlem, New York before joining the West Baltimore branch of the Higher Achievement after-school program in Baltimore, Maryland as its founding director. Mckesson was then hired as a training resource manager for The New Teacher Project in New York City in 2010, working there for a year before returning to Baltimore as a human capital strategist for Baltimore City Public Schools. In 2013, he was hired as senior director of human capital for Minneapolis Public Schools in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he remained until 2015 when he left to focus full-time on anti-racist activism in the wake of the police killing of African American teenager Michael Brown. In 2015, he along with Johnetta Elzie, Brittany Packnett and Samuel Sinyangwe launched the “Mapping Police Violence” project as well as Campaign Zero. In 2016, Mckesson was hired as interim chief of human capital for Baltimore City Public Schools and ran for mayor of Baltimore. In 2017, he launched his news and politics podcast Pod Save the People in 2017. In 2020, Mckesson continued his work with his 8 Can’t Wait campaign in response to the murder of George Floyd to curtail police violence in major cities. Mckesson is the author of On the Other Side of Freedom, published in 2018, and has made regular appearances on national media outlets including The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, NPR, MSNBC, and CNN.

Mckesson, who has served on the board of directors for Rock the Vote, has received honorary doctorates from Bowdoin College, The New School, and the Maryland Institute College of Art. Mckesson was featured on the cover of The Advocate , Adweek, and Attitude magazines. He was named to Fortune magazine’s list of the "World’s Greatest Leaders" in 2015 and to Time magazine’s list of "30 Most Influential People on the Internet" in 2016. Mckesson’s portrait, featuring his signature blue Patagonia vest, was added to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 2019.

Mckesson lives in New York City, New York.

DeRay Mckesson was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on December 16, 2022.

Writer, director, and film professor Jamal Joseph was born on January 10, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York as Eddie Joseph. He was raised by Charles and Noonie Baltimore. Joseph joined the Black Panther Party after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. In 1969, at the age of sixteen, he became the youngest member of the Panther 21 criminal conspiracy case.

In 1981, Joseph was convicted on a federal charge of harboring fugitive ex-Panthers. He was sentenced to Fort Leavenworth prison where he continued organizing and enrolled in classes through a University of Kansas extension. While in prison, he earned his B.A. degrees in psychology and sociology, wrote five plays, two volumes of poetry and founded a prison theater company. After his release in 1987, he was hired by Touro College as a counselor, director of student activities, and professor. In 1997, Joseph co-founded and became executive artistic director of the IMPACT Repertory Theatre in Harlem, New York. In 1998, he began teaching screenwriting at Columbia University. Joseph went on to become the first black chair of the Graduate Film Program in the School of the Arts and was later appointed a professor of professional practice. He also served as executive director of New Heritage Films, a not-for-profit organization that provides training and opportunities for minority filmmakers.

Joseph has written and directed for Black Starz, HBO, Fox TV, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros., and A&E. His produced screenplays include Ali: An American Hero (Fox), New York Undercover (Fox), Knights of the South Bronx (A&E), and The Many Trials of Tammy B. (Nickelodeon). He wrote and directed Drive By: A Love Story, Da Zone, and the docudrama Hughes Dreams Harlem for Starz. He has also published two books: Tupac Shakur Legacy (2006) and a memoir, Panther Baby: A Life of Rebellion and Reinvention (2012).

Joseph has been featured in The New York Times, ABC’s Nightline, Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam, BET’s American Gangster, ESPN’s One Night in Vegas, and VH1’s Lord of the Revolution. He was named one of the top twelve African American educators in New York by the New York Daily News. His awards include a Cine Golden Eagle, a Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and an NAACP Leadership Award. In 2008, Joseph was nominated along with students from the IMPACT Repertory Theatre for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.

He lives in New York City with his wife and three children.

Jamal Joseph was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on August 29, 2014.

Civic leader and philanthropist Sherry Bronfman was born in Chicago, Illinois to Vera Mae Searcy and Cecil Monroe Brewer. She enrolled in Chicago's Goodman School of Drama in 1964 before accepting a two-year scholarship to the Edward S. Harkness House in New York City, New York where she studied with Lloyd Richards and the Negro Ensemble Workshop.

In 1967, Bronfman was cast in Cab Calloway’s Tony Award-winning version of the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly! starring Pearl Bailey. In the 1970s, Bronfman modeled for Essence and other magazines. She made her feature-film debut in 1971 in the movie Shaft in the role of Marcy. Bronfman also played the role of Rochina in the movie Brave New World in 1980, based on the novel by Aldous Huxley, before retiring from acting when she married the Seagram Company’s Edgar Bronfman Jr.

For decades, Bronfman has been an active philanthropist and civic leader for organizations like the Museum for African Art, the New York Public Library, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Temple of Understanding, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). She also served on the board for the National Urban League, Steiner Books, and was a founding board member of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. Additionally, Bronfman has served on the advisory committee for the City College of New York Publishing Certificate Program and the admissions committee of the Westside Montessori School in London. Bronfman organized the first Art for Life benefit for the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation in 1995 and has raised millions of dollars for the organization over the decades. She has also organized fundraisers for children’s programming at Jazz at the Lincoln Center.

Bronfman was active in the political campaigns of former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun, former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She was honored as a special guest by the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation at their 2011 Gold Rush Awards and fifteenth anniversary gala. She was featured in a 2014 episode of Unsung Hollywood, a docuseries that profiled influential African American entertainment icons.

Bronfman lives in New York City. She has three adult children, Benjamin Bronfman, Vanessa Bronfman, and Hannah Bronfman.

Sherry Bronfman was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on December 13, 2022.

Corporate executive Wendell J. Knox was born on February 13, 1948, in New Orleans, Louisiana to Esther Ruby Williams Knox and McBurnett Knox Sr. He attended Bush Elementary School and graduated from St. Augustine High School in New Orleans. He received his B.A. degree in social relations in 1969 from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Knox was hired in 1969 as a research associate by Abt Associates, a policy research and business consulting firm, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Also, in 1969, he was promoted to deputy manager for Abt Associates’ evaluation of community development corporations for the Office of Economic Opportunity. From 1973 to 1983, Knox directed the firm’s urban economics practice and directed the launch of the company’s major diversification into international economic development. He was promoted to vice president of Abt Associates in 1976. In 1983, Knox led the creation of the company’s business research and consulting practice, which would later spawn the subsidiary Abt Biopharma Solutions. Knox was promoted to president and CEO of Abt Associates in 1992. He was the first African American president of Abt Associates. He diversified the firm’s portfolio and secured several international healthcare system modernization and social housing contracts, expanding the company’s revenues five-fold to over $300 million. Knox retired from Abt Associates in 2009.

Knox served on the board of directors for several corporations, including Eastern Bank from 1995 to 2008, Commonwealth Capital Ventures since 1995, and Natixis and Loomis Sayles Funds since 2009, as well as The Hanover Insurance Group and Maine Pointe, LLC. He also served on the boards of Brigham and Women's Hospital, The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, The Partnership, The Biomedical Sciences Career Program, The Efficacy Institute, the Dimock Community Foundation, and the National Association of Corporate Directors New England Chapter.

Knox was the recipient of Conexion’s Mentorship Award in 2016 and was named the 2008 Private Corporation Director of the Year by the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Knox lives with his wife, Lucy Algeré Knox, in Lincoln, Massachusetts. They have three adult children, Matthew, Clinton, and Wendell Knox, Jr. and seven grandchildren.

Wendell J. Knox was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on October 19, 2022.

Opera singer Reri Grist was born on February 29, 1932 in New York City to Ena Grist and Arthur Grist. After studying voice at New York City’s High School of Music & Art, graduating in 1950, Grist went on to attend Queens College in New York City, where she earned her B.A. degree in music in 1954.

Grist made her theatrical debut in 1946 in the play Jeb with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee in New York City. She continued to act and began singing in high school, performing in Jan Meyerowitz’s opera The Barrier in 1950 and Oscar Hammerstein’s Carmen Jones in 1956. In 1957, Grist was cast as Consuelo in the original Broadway production of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, introducing the song “Somewhere.” In 1959, while working as a social worker in New York City, Grist won a singing competition that propelled her to her operatic debut as a coloratura soprano in Santa Fe, New Mexico as Adele in Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. While in Santa Fe, she met the composer Igor Stravinsky, who invited her to play the title character in his opera Le Rossignol, later performed in Washington D.C. Grist worked again with Leonard Bernstein in 1960, performing Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, which was broadcast as part of the Young People’s Concerts. On a trip to Europe later that year, she auditioned for the Cologne Opera, where she soon had her first European appearance as the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

Grist then joined the Zurich Opera and went on to sing at the Glyndebourne Festival, Royal Opera House, Vienna State Opera, San Francisco Opera, Salzburg Festival, and Lyric Opera of Chicago. She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1966, beginning twelve seasons of appearances. Grist was known for her renditions of Mozart and Richard Strauss, especially in the role of Zerbinetta in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. In 1991, she made her final stage appearance, performing in Neither, a one-woman opera by Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett. Grist also held professorships at the Indiana University Bloomington School of Music and Hochschule für Musik und Theater München. She taught master classes at the Santa Fe Opera, the San Francisco Opera Merola Program, the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, the International Opera Studio Hamburgische Staatsoper, the Ravinia Summer Festival, and the USA Summer Festival.

Grist holds honorary degrees from Queens College and the Juilliard School. She was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Licia Albanese Foundation, the Legacy Award by the National Opera Association, and was inducted into OperaAmerica’s Opera Hall of Fame. In Germany, she was honored with the Opus Klassik award and the prestigious Bayerische Kammersängerin title by the state of Bavaria.

Grist lives in Hamburg, Germany with her husband, Ulf Thomson. They have one daughter, Mareka Thomson.

Reri Grist was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on July 20, 2022.