Role Models

Award Winning Graphic Designer,  Writer,  &  Educator

Gail Anderson is a graphic designer and writer. She was born in 1962 in the Bronx, New York. Her family had moved from Jamaica to New York just before she was born. As a young child in New York, she had an interest in creating magazines. She would create magazines for the musical group called The Jackson 5. She attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

After graduation, Gail Anderson took a job as a designer at Vintage Books. Later, she became a designer for the Boston Globe Magazine, and was there for two years. Afterward, she went to work for Rolling Stone Magazine, where she worked for 15 years. She advanced her career and become the senior art director for the publication.

In 2002, Gail Anderson left Rolling Stone to become the Creative Director at SpotCo, an advertising agency. She was an instrumental part of creating many types of advertisements like subway posters and billboards. Her work has won awards from AIGA, the National Design Museum, the Library of Congress and many more. In 2013 she designed a U.S postal stamp to celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation. She currently lives in New York City and teaches design classes at the School of Visual Arts.

• gailycurl.com

Citizen Designer & Design Strategist

SYLVIA HARRIS

Sylvia Harris was a pioneer in the field of social impact design. She was born in Richmond, Virginia and attended Virginia Commonwealth University. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Art and Design.

Her first job out of college was at Washington Business Group on Health in Boston Massachusetts. She later went on to work at Architects Collaborative where she created environmental graphics. She eventually left Architects Collaborative to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Yale University.

After receiving her MFA, Sylvia Harris partnered with two other people to form Two Twelve Associates. This company did work for Citibank. She later left Two Twelve Associates to form her own design company called Sylvia Harris LLC.

Sylvia Harris’s unique focus was creating accessible, relatable, and understandable communications for mass audiences. She used design research and graphic designs to solve problems for civic agencies, universities, and hospitals. Her mission was to create “good design for real people.” For this she became known as the Citizen Designer. One example of these “good designs for real people” was her work with the United States Census Bureau. Her designs for this agency helped encourage underrepresented populations participate in the census. Another example of Sylvia Harris’s work serving real people can be found in her work for New-York Presbyterian and Columbia University Medical Center. Her designs there solved the center’s problem of first-time patients getting lost on their way to appointments.

She went on to create and serve as principal of Citizen Research & Design, a communications firm that served people through policy and design. She was involved in AIGA’s Design for Democracy and served on the U.S. Postal Service’s Citizen’s Stamp Advisory Committee.

In 2010 her achievements were honored by AIGA in an exhibition called “Design Journeys: You Are Here.”

Sylvia Harris died unexpectedly in 2011 due to heart problems. She was posthumously awarded the American Institute of Graphic Arts Medal in 2014.

• designtrust.org/people/fellows/sylvia-harris
• aiga.org/medalist-sylvia-harris

Graphic Designer,  Fashion Designer,  &  Magazine Creator

JANELL LANGFORD

Janell Langford is a forward-thinking graphic designer from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She uses her keen eye to create fashion, clothing, and accessories, even starting her own label called Obsidiopolis. She also started a lifestyle publication called Obsidian Magazine. Janell Langford made a name for herself by managing to break into the exclusive fashion industry despite being based so far from usual urban fashion hubs, such as New York and Los Angeles.

Her design motivation has been to create what she wanted to see more of, and she is on a mission to uplift Black women through her designs. One of her fashion collections is called “Faceted”. She is using this collection to celebrate the “multitudes beneath the surface of each and every one of us and the many dimensions we all contain.” Working with Meow Wolf, an arts and entertainment company, Janell Langford has created a full collection of t-shirts, posters, cards, totes, and other accessories.

With a foothold in the fashion industry, her goal is to expand into as many different mediums as possible. She was featured in ESSENCE magazine in January 2020. 

• janellgraphicdesign.com
• obsidiopolis.com

Electrical Engineer & NASCAR Champion

BILL LESTER

Bill Lester is a professional NASCAR driver and a pioneer for Black Americans in NASCAR. Born William Alexander Lester III, in 1961 in Washington D.C., he and his family later moved to San Francisco, California. It was here that he found his love of racing. At the age of 8 his parents took him to a racetrack, and he had an interest in car racing from that point on. He graduated from the University of California with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He went on to work at Hewlett-Packard for 15 years.

In 1999 he left his job at Hewlett-Packard to fully commit his time to car racing. He was the first Black American to compete in the NASCAR Busch series. He became the second Black driver to win a major NASCAR race in 2003. He currently lives in Windermere Florida with his wife and two sons.

• billlester.com

TRAilBlazing CEO &  Leader of DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

CYNTHIA MARSHALL

Cynthia Marshall was born in Alabama. Her parents moved the family to California when she was very young because they didn’t want to raise their children in the Jim Crow south. Raised in the housing projects of Richmond, California, she didn’t realize just how poor she was until later in life.

Education was one of the highest priorities for Cynthia Marshall growing up. She and her siblings spent summers studying while other kids vacationed. Her mother created lesson plans for them using civil servant exams, and she eagerly looked forward to going to school each day. She saw school as her way out of poverty.

The family’s focus on education paid off for her. She received 5 full scholarships to different colleges after graduation. She accepted the offer and full scholarship from University of California Berkeley to stay close to home. Overwhelmed by the experience of going to college, when Cynthia Marshall arrived at the campus for the first time, she told herself, “Girl, you gotta be big!”

She was a determined and singularly focused student. While at UC Berkeley, she became the school’s first Black cheerleader. And after graduation, she received thirteen jobs offers. She opted to go to work for AT&T because they offered the highest paying job with a fast-track management program.

She worked her way up within AT&T, eventually serving as president of AT&T in North Carolina and later as senior vice president of human resources and chief diversity office. She became the first Black person to chair the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce. Cynthia Marshall had a 36-year career at AT&T.

She had planned to retire after decades of accomplishments at AT&T, but more opportunities kept coming her way. Dow Chemical Company asked her to come create its inclusion program, and she couldn’t say no. Before she had finished the project with Dow Chemical, she was contacted by Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. The Dallas Mavericks are one of 32 teams in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Cuban reached out to Cynthia Marshall to ask her to bring her executive leadership and corporate expertise to his organization and serve as the Maverick’s Chief Executive Officer.

Breaking a double glass ceiling, Cynthia Marshall is the first Black woman to become a CEO of any team in the NBA. She stepped into the role saying “I felt like I was being called into service. For the sisterhood.”

• mavs.com/cynt

Tax & Accounting Expert, Entrepreneur, & Author

BUFFIE PURSELLE

Buffie Purselle, the Tax Heiress, is a third-generation entrepreneur and tax expert. She upholds a long legacy of entrepreneurial women. Her grandmother started several businesses with a mission to provide good jobs for her family members and people in her community. From her grandmother’s and mother’s examples she learned the principles of accounting and also the principles of starting and growing a business.

Buffie Purselle attended Georgia State University. While in college, she began her first entrepreneurial venture selling prepaid home phone services. Although she had the option of working for her family’s business, Buffie Purselle decided to branch out own her own. In 1997, she started her first tax practice. Soon after, she decided to become a licensed mortgage broker and insurance agent, as both seemed a natural progression to her tax empire. In 2007, she wisely sold her practice before the mortgage industry declined, and she began to focus only on her tax business.

Buffie Purselle now owns a chain of tax and accounting practices across the state of Georgia called Buffie the Tax Heiress. She also owns a business called the Creative Artist Group that provides business management services for people in the film and TV industry. Additionally, Buffie Purselle authored a book called Crawl Before You Ball, and she started a financial management company by the same name.  She resides in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband.

• buffiepurselle.com
• taxheiress.com

Executive Director of NBPA,  Lawyer,  &  Glass Ceiling destroyer

Michele Roberts grew up in a low-income housing project in the Bronx borough of New York City. As a young girl, she would often go with her mom to watch cases at the nearby courthouse as a hobby. During one of these courtroom visits, she saw a friend of the family denied bail because his lawyer didn’t do a good job. Her mother explained that young man had been given a lawyer that the court picks for people who are too poor to hire their own. At age 7, Michele Roberts decided that she would become a lawyer for poor people. She took school very seriously and went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University. She then went to University of California Berkeley to get a law degree.

Just as she had planned, she became a lawyer for people who couldn’t afford to hire one. She worked at the Public Defender’s office in the District of Columbia for eight years, getting promoted as high as Chief of the Trial Division. After leaving there she became a trial lawyer at a firm called Akin Gump, and later at a firm called Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

In 2014, she became the Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association (NPBA), the union that represents professional NBA basketball players.  Prior to taking this role, Michele Roberts had never considered herself as “trying to break any glass ceilings”, but that is exactly what she ended up doing. She is the first woman to head a major professional sports union in North America. And was named on of ESPNW’s Impact 25 in 2014.

Michele Roberts once said in an interview, “And so, it occurs to me, I certainly intended to be the best executive director in the history of the union, anyway. But now I better because the thought is if I’m not, then there’ll always be some silly person who says, well, she was a girl.”

As ED of the NBPA, it is Michele Roberts's job to make sure the players in the National Basketball Association are allowed to negotiate for fair wages and conditions of employment. Most of the NBA’s players are Black men, and Black people are systemically paid less than White people who do the same job. And although Black men account for 75% of the league’s players, there is only one Black majority owner and only 1 Black minority owner in the entire NBA. Without Black owners, there are few Black people being hired as General Managers and Head Coaches. The opportunities for Blacks in the NBA is too often capped at being a player. This is the definition of a glass ceiling.

So, although her clients are no longer poor people in need of public defenders, Michele Roberts still uses her spirit of advocacy to help level the playing field for a group of people who are not always treated fairly and who don’t have enough representation in positions of power. She wants to make sure players they are paid fairly, can negotiate contracts fairly, and are not denied equal opportunity to climb up to the ranks of team leadership, management, and even ownership.  With ceilings over her own head shattered, she is aiming to remove the same barrier for a whole league of players.

Michele Roberts is also an Adjunct Faculty member at Harvard Law School and a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. She lives in New York City.

• nbpa.com/leadership
• theundefeated.com

WORLD CLASS CHEF & RESTAURATEUR

MARCUS SAMUELSSON

Marcus Samuelson is an award-winning chef. He is also the owner and head chef of Red Rooster, a popular restaurant in Harlem, New York. Marcus was born in 1971 in Ethiopia. He and his sister were adopted by a Swedish family, after being separated from their family in the chaos of the Ethiopian Civil War. Marcus Samuelsson spent the rest of his childhood in Sweden. While in Sweden he took an interest in cooking and attended culinary school there. In 1994, at the age of 23, he moved to America to be a chef at a restaurant in New York called Aquavit.

While at Aquavit he became a popular and highly awarded chef. He won the Best Chef: New York City Award and the Best International Cookbook Award by the James Beard Foundation. He served President Barack Obama’s first state dinner in 2009. In 2010 he opened the Red Rooster restaurant in Harlem, New York. The Red Rooster is a soul food restaurant. It serves meals that add a gourmet flare to dishes inspired by the rich traditions of the Black American culture. Marcus Samuelsson currently lives in Harlem with his wife and two kids.

• marcussamuelsson.com

NASCAR PIONEER  &  BUSINESS OWNER

WENDELL SCOTT

Wendell Scott was a professional NASCAR and the first Black American to professionally race in NASCAR, and one of the most accomplished racers of all time. He was born in 1921 in Virginia. From a young age Wendell Scott was inspired to be his own boss. He found that the best way to fulfill that goal was to open his own car repair shop. Around the same time, he fell in love with racing. He would work in the repair shop during the week and go to watch car races on the weekends.

After watching plenty of races he decided he would enter a NASCAR race of himself. He paid his own way, built his own a car, and entered a race. When he got there, he was turned away and not allowed to enter the race because he was Black. At that time, only White people were allowed to race in NASCAR. Wendell Scott tried many times, and each time was turned away. Wendell decided to join races run by the Dixie Circuit. The Dixie Circuit was a separate organization that competed with NASCAR and accepted Black race car drivers.

By dominating in the Dixie Circuit series, Wendell made quite a name for himself, even appearing in a local newspaper. He decided his next step would be to fight for his right to be in NASCAR. After a lot of hard work and battling, he finally made it into NASCAR. He ended up with an abundant career, winning countless NASCAR races and over 100 top ten performances. He died in 1990.

After his death, Wendell Scott was awarded a historical marker in Danville, Virginia that reads “Persevering over prejudice and discrimination, Scott broke racial barriers in NASCAR, with a 13-year career that included 20 top five and 147 top ten finishes”. In 2014 he was added to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

• wendellscott.org

Graphic Design Researcher, Strategist, & Educator

MICHELE WASHINGTON

Michele Washington is a highly accomplished graphic designer and design educator. From a young age, she showed an interest in studying elements of color. Her parents encouraged her sense of creativity. Her mother taught her how to sew and knit. And when she was in fourth grade, her father introduced her to stamp collection. She still has that collection today.

One of the unique ways that Michele Washington creates graphic designs is by incorporating language and writing systems from other cultures. She has a passion for design research that has led her to use critical thinking to solve complex issues. She holds two Master’s degrees. Her first is a Master of Design Criticism from Pratt Institute, and her second is a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts.

Michele Washington has worked as a designer and art director for publications such as The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Business Monthly, Essence, and Self. Her writings and visual essays have appeared in Women Designers in the USA, Design Journey: You Are Here at the AIGA headquarters, Google Black History and Culture, and many other publications.

She joined a team of researchers and strategist to work on archives for the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). She is currently on the faculty of the Fashion Institute of Technology and is also the editor of culturalboundaries.com.

As an educator, she enjoys using her classroom as an idea lab. Her advice to young artist designers is to be persistent and never let anyone stand in the way of your dreams.  Michele Washington lives in New York city.

• officeofmichelewashington.com/
• culturalboundaries.com

Music Legend, American Icon,  & Civil Rights Activist

STEVIE WONDER

Stevie Wonder is a singer, songwriter, and musical savant. Born Stevland Hardaway Judkins in 1950 in Saginaw, Michigan, he became blind in the first couple of weeks after his birth. But that didn't stop him from learning to make music, for which he would later become legendary. He started singing at church when he was about 4 years old. He also started playing the piano at an incredibly early age, along with the harmonica and the drums. He signed his first record deal with Motown Records at age 11. By age 13, he had a #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, making him the youngest artist to have ever done so at the time. After his first album was released, he attended the Michigan School for the Blind.

Stevie Wonder has had one of the most accomplished and renowned careers of any musician of all time. He holds the record for the most Grammys won by a solo artist, with a total count of 25 Grammys. He was the first Black musician to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2014, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama for his lifetime of activism for social and civil justice.

He has performed at the White House, the Olympics, and countless other illustrious events and venues. His achievements seem to be beyond measure. He holds the respect and admiration of numerous musicians who are legends in their own right.

Stevie Wonder has been a considered a legendary figure in music, Black culture, and America history for six decades. Stevie Wonder currently lives in Detroit, Michigan.

• britannica.com/biography/Stevie-Wonder
• steviewonder.org.uk/awards/awards