We are giving our flowers to Black leaders who are shaping the future.
Established in 2022, the AFROTECH™ Future 50 list will commemorate innovators, visionaries, founders, venture capitalists, technologists, and changemakers in the technology sector who have made historic strides, lifted as they climbed to create a more inclusive future, and are transforming their sectors and communities.
AFROTECH™ Future 50 Categories
There are five categories for submission.
The Dynamic Investors category highlights venture capitalists who have not only driven strong returns but have also championed underrepresented founders in technology. A prime example is Charles Hudson, founder and managing partner of Precursor Ventures, which manages over $175 million in assets and has made more than 413 investments, according to Carta.
Next, the Future Makers category will honor Black professionals who have achieved historic firsts, earned industry recognition, launched groundbreaking products, measured impact in society and technology, or secured patents. One standout example is former Disney Imagineer Lanny Smoot, who holds over 100 patents.
Visionary Founders have exemplified a commitment to diversity and inclusion, created products tailored for people of color, and demonstrated company growth. Additionally, Changemakers are driving social impact by fostering diversity within their companies and advocating for it in their communities, while the Corporate Catalysts category focuses on directors or VP-level trailblazers who champion diversity through initiatives within their organizations and throughout their career trajectories.
Submit To Be Considered For The 2025 AFROTECH™ Future 50 List
You can nominate yourself or someone who has made significant strides and been a trailblazer. Recipients will be honored and recognized during the annual AFROTECH™ Conference, which is returning Oct. 27-31, 2025, to Houston, TX.
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Submissions forms are now open and will close on April 11, 2025.
For guidance, look to our Legacy Leaders who are paving the way and setting the standard for excellence and aspiration.
Timnit Gebru
Gebru, a Stanford University Ph.D. graduate in electrical engineering, is the founder of Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), an organization founded in 2021 that centers artificial intelligence (AI) development, including racial and gender disparities. Its origins stem from her exit as a full-time co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team, which was tasked with conducting research on AI’s impact, algorithmic bias, and fairness.
Gebru was the only Black woman researcher, to her knowledge, when she signed on with Google, and she fought many battles to foster a safe environment for her team, which included queer, Black, and Latino individuals. Gebru says she was fired from Google in 2020 as a result of a research paper written by the team that centered the harms of large language models similar to ChatGPT, which was released two years later.
“We saw this race to create larger and larger models, and these were primarily harming marginalized communities,” she told AFROTECH™. “For example, it takes a lot of environmental resources and compute power to train and evaluate these models and run them. Because of environmental racism, the people who bear the burden and the costs are not the same as the people who benefit from these systems. Then, when you look at the views that are propagated through these systems, they’re hegemonic views, and course, racist, sexist, and all perpetuating all of the ‘isms.’ So we wrote this paper, and we were told that we had to take our name off of this paper and/or withdraw it. I was willing to do it as long as we had a discussion on what kind of research we could do, what kind of processes we need to follow because we followed all of the processes we knew in the company. So then I was fired, and they said that I had resigned.”
Now, through the Distributed AI Research Institute, Gebru is afforded the opportunity to tap individuals who, she says, would not be hired by Google or earn a living wage, but are shaping the future and have experienced surveillance or worker exploitation.
“I wanted to make sure that the institute’s work was shaped by not just computer scientists and engineers but people who have lived experience with respect to some of the harms that have been perpetuated in their lives through technology, and how to stop those harms,” she explained.
Lewis Hamilton
British Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton is an inspiration to many on the racetrack, but the legacy he wants to leave includes creating a future that will lead others to make their mark in the sport as well. Hamilton is an advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). After 12 years with the Mercedes team, he joined Ferrari in 2025 and has witnessed progress in diversity within the sport where he made history as Formula 1’s first Black driver. In 2020, Mercedes launched diversity initiatives and became more intentional in hiring individuals from underrepresented groups, such as Black engineers, as a result of the increased awareness of racism following George Floyd’s murder by a police officer, the Time reports.
That very year, Hamilton launched the Hamilton Commission, which released research on Black representation in motorsports, and this led to the inception of Mission 44. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, the foundation is empowering the youth in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and exposing them to career pathways in motorsports.
Rosalind ‘Roz’ Brewer
Rosalind “Roz” Brewer made history for being the only Black woman serving at a Fortune 500 company when she became Walgreens Boots Alliance’s CEO in 2021. The Spelman College graduate with a chemistry degree from Detroit, MI, had already proven to be a corporate catalyst with a track record that dates back to her time with Kimberly-Clark (KMB). There she scaled from intern to eventually become president of its manufacturing and global operations, CNN mentions. Brewer went on to serve as Walmart vice president and Starbucks Corp.’s chief operating chief, where she became the first Black woman to hold this title and assumed the role after joining its board. She managed areas such as global marketing, technology, supply chain, and product innovation.
“Over the course of my career, whether I was a bench chemist or a CEO, I have often been a ‘first,’ and unfortunately many times I’ve also been the only African-American person in the boardroom or the C-suite,” Brewer told Business Insider. “It’s changing, but not quickly enough, and there’s more work to do.”
Brewer has also served as president and CEO of Sam’s Club, sat on boards of companies such as Amazon and Spelman College — also serving as its interim president since November 2024 — and has remained a champion of DEI throughout her career.
“You have to speak up and speak out. And I try to use my platform for that. I try to set an example,” Brewer explained, according to CNN.
Charles D. King
New York native Charles D. King, who boasts a law degree from Howard University, has forged his own lane as the founder of multi-media company MACRO. Previously, King climbed his way to the top of the ladder at global talent agency William Morris Endeavor (WME), where he was able to secure an early position with a $300 weekly pay, states Variety. He then made great strides becoming the first Black individual to scale from its training program in the Beverly Hills, CA-based film and TV group to partner.
In 2015, he officially exited from his role at WME, and through award-winning platform MACRO, he has released 18 feature films and two TV shows, and earned 15 Oscar nominations and three wins, its website lists. The platform has been instrumental in pushing stories that represent diverse groups. Specific projects include “Fences” (2016, grossed $64 million) and “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” (2017), both starring Denzel Washington; “Just Mercy,” which featured Michael B. Jordan (2019, grossed $50 million); and “They Cloned Tyrone” (2023), The Hollywood Reporter notes.
King’s objective with MACRO is “to focus on telling stories from and about people of color, ” he said, according to NPR. “There were just not enough of these types of movies.”
In March 2023, MACRO secured $90 million in strategic funding in a round led by BlackRock Alternatives through the BlackRock Impact Opportunities Fund as well as funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, to further its operation and initiatives, per AFROTECH™. The platform had already raised more than $150 million in financing.
MACRO has several verticals, which include an in-house creative agency (Brand MACRO); a talent management firm representing filmmakers, actors, writers, and more (M88); and an early-stage venture firm investing in technology companies (MaC Venture Capital).
King is also an angel investor and
John W. Rogers, Jr.
John W. Rogers, Jr. was able to gain two and a half years of experience working as a stock broker at William Blair & Co., which taught him the ins and outs of money management and mutual funds. At 24, Rogers took what he calls a “leap” and became the founder, chairman, CEO and chief investment officer of Ariel Investments, a global asset management firm headquartered in Chicago, IL. In February 2023, Forbes reported the firm had over $16 billion in assets. Its existence also marks a historic first, as it is the first Black-owned mutual fund company in the U.S.
“I made the leap because I had an investment strategy and philosophy that I really believed in that I thought would make money for my clients and we’d be able to outperform back then the S&P 500,” he said in a video shared by Harris Public Policy. “Forty years ago, you didn’t have all these specialized indexes to compete against, you were just trying to outperform the broad market picking stocks. And our approach to being a value manager in small and mid-size companies we were confident was a winning strategy. And we are one of the early movers in investing in smaller undervalued securities with kind of a Warren Buffet approach to that.”
Three years later, Rogers launched the Ariel Fund, which had $2.7 billion assets under management as of Dec. 31, 2024, its website states.
Rogers also serves as on the boards of McDonald’s, Nike, and The New York Times Company, and is a vice chair of the board of trustees for the University of Chicago and the Obama Foundation, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Rogers’ profile also states his industry recognitions include the Woodrow Wilson Award (2008), Princeton University’s highest honor, which is given to an alumni for their outstanding efforts in public service. Rogers was also named in “The World’s 99 Greatest Investors (The Secret of Success),” a book
“Warren Buffett has been a hero of mine for close to 30 years. I’ve read every book on him, every magazine article. I love to see him on CNBC,” Rogers told Chicago Magazine. “The most important thing to us that Warren talks about is the circle of competence — investing in things you understand. You’ve got to be there — involved in meetings with CEOs, on conference calls, on company tours — and see if you believe their stories of recovery. The fact that you have something close to home makes it easier.”
