The Higher Education of the Nation’s Most High Achieving Black Women in Business

Recently Black Enterprise magazine published its list of the 50 most powerful black women in business. JBHE has checked their academic backgrounds and found that all but one of the African-American women on the Black Enterprise list have earned a college diploma. A large number of these black women hold one or more graduate degrees.

Seven of the women are graduates of black colleges whereas eight are alumnae of Ivy League colleges. Sixteen of these black women executives hold graduate degrees from Ivy League universities and eight of these are Harvard alumnae. Seven of these women hold a graduate or undergraduate degree from Northwestern.

More than half of the women executives hold an MBA. Six hold law degrees. Janice Bryant Howroyd, CEO of Act 1 Group, is the only one of the 50 top black women executives to hold a Ph.D.