While black brilliance undeniably shines through across various fields, when it comes to ranking the world’s richest, they are quite often not readily recognised. Preexisting factors such as unfavorable policies evident in lack of equal economic opportunities continue to escalate, leading to the accumulation of wealth among a minute population.
However, racial wealth gap statistics or not, despite the odds, African American talents are continuously pushing through, trumping barriers and scaling untold heights to secure wealth creation, paving a brighter future.
Tech billionaire David Steward with a cool $5.8 billion net worth is the Founder of World Wide Technology, a top-notch IT provider firm providing digital strategy, innovative technology, and supply chain solutions to large public and private organizations around the globe. Worth over a staggering $12bn, her enviable clientele includes Verizon, Citi bank, and the Government.
The 70-year-old who follows closely behind Robert F. Smith of Vista Equity Partners, the Richest Black Man in America with a whopping $6 billion net worth, amazingly rose from humble beginnings to achieve mega-rich status.
From his early childhood in the segregated South with seven siblings; his father worked as a mechanic, janitor, and trash collector, Steward rewrote his story.
His entrepreneurial journey started way back in 1990 with just savings, this was the birth of World Wide Technology. But it wasn’t an instant success, a few years after delving fully, things turned bad and his firm was $3.5 million in debt. Sometimes for months, he went without a paycheck and once even had to watch his car get repossessed from the office parking lot.
Thankfully, it all changed after he began partnering with government bodies and big private firms, his business bounced back with massive profits to show. The self-made billionaire is a majority owner of the nearly $12 billion (sales) company.
He landed at No. 182 on Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans, following Robert F. Smith, the only two who made the list.
Applaudably Steward is not just accumulating wealth but giving back, he donated $1.3 million to the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2018 to create the David and Thelma Steward Institute for Jazz Studies.
He holds a Bachelor of Arts/Science from Central Missouri State University.
#FunFacts
Steward’s daughter was a producer of the 2016 movie Manchester by the Sea. While his son is the CEO of Polarity, a company that produces comics, animation, and other kinds of entertainment featuring diverse characters, Forbes reports.
