Black Men: The Builders Behind Amari Ruff, André Rice, Billy Vickers and Bob Johnson

Amari Ruff

Founder and CEO, Sudu — Atlanta, GA

Official links: Website

Amari Ruff knows what it means to start with almost nothing. When he was 16, his military father left, and Ruff helped his mother raise his two siblings while the family moved between relatives and homeless shelters; at one point he commuted more than four hours a day just to stay at the same high school while working.

College proved unaffordable, so he took a job as a cable technician, climbed into enterprise contract work, and in 2010 started a telecommunications installation company with $300 and a 1990 Ford Ranger — no degree, by his own account, just will and guts. He grew that business to nearly 200 trucks across five locations.

Then, volunteering with an association for diverse trucking companies, he heard the same story again and again: small minority-, women- and veteran-owned carriers could not get quality freight because big corporations would not work with firms their size. In 2015 he launched Sudu in Atlanta, a technology marketplace that groups those carriers together and connects them to corporate shippers.

"Patience is one of the most underestimated skills needed to grow a company."

Sudu’s network grew to more than 300,000 trucking companies, and Ruff cut freight deals with Walmart, UPS, P&G, Delta and Anheuser-Busch, building a company reported to be worth $20 million.

The honors followed — NMTA Minority Business of the Year in 2016, a Georgia Trend Trendsetter nod in 2017 and an Atlanta Business Chronicle InnoVenture Award — and Ruff became a sought-after speaker, including at the Nelson Mandela Fellows Panel at Georgia Tech.

His model stays pointed at the carriers the industry overlooks: group them, give them technology, and let their combined size open corporate doors.

Black Enterprise — “This Once Homeless, Black Entrepreneur Now Owns a $20M Trucking Company”
Black Business — “Once Homeless, This Black Entrepreneur Now Owns a $20 Million Trucking Company”
SHOPPE BLACK — “This Entrepreneur Went From Being Homeless To Running a Million Dollar Logistics Company”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  John Hope Bryant  ·  André Rice

André Rice

Founder and President, Muller & Monroe Asset Management (M²) — Chicago, IL

Official links: Website

André Rice built his foundation the rigorous way. An accounting graduate of South Carolina State University (1978) with an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (1980), he audited at Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Company, spent 1980 to 1985 in securities sales at Goldman Sachs, and then worked in mergers and acquisitions at Kraft Foods.

In 1986 he walked away from corporate America and founded Rice Group, Ltd., an investment banking firm he ran as president. By the late 1990s he had spotted a structural gap: large pension funds wanted exposure to emerging managers, but the infrastructure to find, diligence and support small, women- and minority-owned fund managers barely existed.

In 1999 he co-founded Chicago-based Muller & Monroe Asset Management — M² — to fill that gap, with Rice Group serving as the firm’s managing member, backing emerging lower-middle-market managers on behalf of major public pension plans.

M² now manages about $1.7 billion for some of the largest public pension plans in the United States, including a $100 million CalSTRS commitment to its emerging-manager fund of funds.

Rice’s influence extends well beyond his own firm: Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed him to the boards of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and the Regional Transportation Authority, he joined the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, and he has served on the board of CNA Financial Corporation since 2017.

In 2025 he was named a Power100 honoree, and The HistoryMakers recorded his oral history the same year.

The HistoryMakers — “Andre Rice’s Biography”
Billionaires.Africa — “Meet André Rice, the Chicago investor who built a $1.7 billion empire backing America’s next generation of fund managers”
PRWeb / CalSTRS — “CalSTRS Diversifies the Proactive Private Equity Portfolio”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Amari Ruff  ·  Billy Vickers

Billy Vickers

Owner, President and CEO, Modular Assembly Innovations (MAI Companies) — Dublin, OH

Official links: Website

Billy Vickers’ work ethic was planted on his grandfather’s cotton farm near Forest City, North Carolina, where the whole family pitched in and, as he tells it, you did not make a lot of money with cotton.

A high school football coach persuaded him onto the field, and football carried him to North Carolina State University — the first in his family to attend college.

An NFL dream ended with a knee injury, so he got a ’real job’: management trainee at Corning, then a steel mill in Ironton, Ohio, where he rose to plant superintendent, and then Detroit, running a large minority-owned foundry. In January 2005 he was tapped to lead Great Lakes Assemblies, a modular assembly joint venture with Honda.

Six years later, in 2011, he bought the business he had been running, and it became Modular Assembly Innovations, with Honda as its anchor customer.

"To be successful takes a lot of people."

Under Vickers, MAI grew into one of the largest Black-owned businesses in America — $1.2 billion in revenue in 2019, ranked in the top five of Black Enterprise’s BE 100s, and about $1.1 billion more recently, with four assembly plants in three states, roughly 450 associates and 170 managed suppliers.

Columbus CEO named him a 2024 CEO of the Year in the large for-profit category. True to form, he deflects the credit to his people and to Honda, and Honda’s own procurement diversity team praises the organization he has built to meet a demanding partner’s standards.

Columbus CEO — “Columbus CEO’s CEO of the Year 2024: MAI’s Billy Vickers Builds a Billion-Dollar Business”
AfroTech — “This Black Business Owner Built a Billion-Dollar Company Supplying Car Parts to Honda”
Black Enterprise — “This Black-Owned Auto Parts Supplier Made $1.2 Billion Last Year”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  André Rice  ·  Bob Johnson

Bob Johnson

Founder, BET & RLJ Companies — Washington, D.C. / Bethesda, MD

Official links: Website

Robert Louis Johnson was born in Hickory, Mississippi, in 1946, the ninth of ten children, and grew up in Freeport, Illinois, after his family moved north.

He was the first of his siblings to attend college, earning a degree from the University of Illinois in 1968 and a master’s in public affairs from Princeton in 1972, then building connections in Washington through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Urban League and the cable industry.

Working as a cable lobbyist, he saw an audience nobody was serving. He borrowed $15,000, left his job in 1979 and launched Black Entertainment Television in January 1980 — at first just two hours a week.

BET became the first Black-controlled company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1991, and in 2001 he sold it to Viacom for about $3 billion, becoming the first Black American billionaire.

"Wealth transfer is what’s needed"

Johnson did not stop at BET. He founded the RLJ Companies, a holding company spanning hotels, private equity, finance, real estate and entertainment, and in 2002 became the first Black majority owner of a major U.S. sports franchise, the Charlotte Bobcats, later selling his stake to Michael Jordan.

He created the Liberia Enterprise Development Fund with a $30 million investment to lend to Liberian entrepreneurs, and in 2020 he used his national platform to call for $14 trillion in reparations, arguing that direct wealth transfer is how America closes a racial wealth gap built over centuries.

BlackPast — “Robert Louis Johnson (1946- )”
Britannica Money — “Robert L. Johnson | Biography, BET, & Facts”
Face2Face Africa — “‘Now is the time’ - BET founder Robert Johnson wants U.S. to pay $14 trillion in slavery reparations”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Billy Vickers  ·  Brian Brooks

Brian Brooks

President and Co-Owner, E.E. Ward Moving & Storage — Columbus, OH

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Instagram

Brian Brooks did not found E.E. Ward Moving & Storage — he chose to protect it. The company began in 1881 as the Ward Transfer Line, founded by John T. Ward, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and his son William, starting with two horses and a wagon.

It is recognized as the oldest continuously operating Black-owned business in the United States. Brooks’ connection was personal: his father, a civil-rights lawyer, was the Ward family’s attorney for some 20 years, and Eldon Ward — the last Ward to own the company — was Brooks’ godfather.

With no family succession plan in place, Brooks, together with Otto Beatty III, purchased the company from Eldon Ward in April 2001. Since then he and his wife Dominique, now his co-owner, have run E.E. Ward as self-described caretakers of a great legacy, keeping its founding principles of quality service and strong moral character at the center of the business.

"E.E. Ward was founded on principles of quality service and strong moral character. These principles provide a clear focus of what is most important to our team – first, providing the highest quality service for our customers, second, serving our community, and third, taking care of our company."

Under the Brookses, E.E. Ward has expanded from Columbus to Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, operates as a North American Van Lines agent, and was named North American Van Lines’ 2021 Agent of the Year.

Giving back is built into the company: in 2015 Brooks started Laps for Lunches to fight childhood food insecurity, which evolved into Laps for Learning, a swim-a-thon with the YMCA whose 2017 and 2018 efforts funded safety-around-water classes for more than 400 children.

Brooks also pays it forward through mentorship and by sharing his entrepreneurship story at forums for Black men.

Black Enterprise — “Brian Brooks Talks About Running the Oldest African American-Owned Business in the Nation”
American Trucking Associations — “Mover Highlight: E.E. Ward Moving & Storage Co.”
E.E. Ward Moving — “How America’s Oldest Black-Owned Business Survived 140 Years”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Bob Johnson  ·  C. David Moody

C. David Moody

Founder, President & CEO, C.D. Moody Construction — Lithonia / Atlanta, GA

Official links: Website · Instagram

Charles David Moody Jr. grew up in Chicago, moved to Ann Arbor at fourteen, and came south on a Morehouse football scholarship before earning an architecture degree at Howard.

In 1988, with a young family, debts, and what he calls nothing to lose, he and his wife Karla started C.D. Moody Construction from their bedroom — their first office — beginning with a single $88,000 contract.

Behind the early success sat a pain he carried in silence: childhood sexual abuse whose memories broke through in 1992, four years into the business, in a complete emotional breakdown. With his wife, his faith and therapy, he healed out loud, and kept building.

The firm he started broke has completed more than 200 commercial projects worth billions — stadiums, airport terminals, museums — and stands among the largest Black-owned construction companies in America.

"But ALI helped me realize that one person could really make a difference in the world."

Moody turned his private healing into public work. He wrote Fighting Through The Fear: My Journey of Healing From Childhood Sexual Abuse, speaks openly so other survivors know they are not alone, and founded MoodySpeaks for survivors to tell their stories.

The C.D. Moody Foundation has awarded more than 80 scholarships, he mentors Atlanta children on financial literacy and hard work, serves on the Morehouse College Board of Trustees, and completed a Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative fellowship in 2015. His measure of success is disarmingly simple: in more than three decades, he says, the firm never missed a payroll.

AfroTech — “Black-Owned Construction Company Goes From Debt to Being Worth Billions”
Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative — “Blazing a Trail from Trauma to Triumph”
Shoppe Black — “Meet David Moody, Owner of a Construction Company That Has Done $3 Billion in Deals”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Brian Brooks  ·  David Lamartiniere

Dorian Boyland

Founder & CEO, Boyland Auto Group — Orlando, FL

Dorian ‘Doe’ Boyland’s first career ended quietly: a second-round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1976, he played 21 major-league games before retiring from baseball in 1982. He had a systems-analyst job at Intel waiting — until a Portland dealer offered him sixty days on a sales floor.

They handed him a pen and told him he was a salesman. He loved it from day one, he says, because it was like sports: every customer a new pitcher. Within eighteen months he was offered a partnership through a minority dealer program, and in 1985 he founded what became Boyland Auto Group.

At its peak he owned and operated 22 dealerships across six states, running the business on analytics and one hard rule — profit on every sale, a minimum 4 percent net — that carried the group to nearly $654 million in revenue in 2018.

"Don’t tell me about your revenue, tell me about your profit. That’s what business is about"

Boyland’s second act made him one of the largest Black auto dealers in America — Black Enterprise ranked Boyland Auto Group the third-largest Black-owned dealership group in the country in 2018, anchored by Mercedes-Benz of South Orlando.

He counts a different number as his biggest accomplishment: over thirty years, he figures he has provided opportunities for ten minorities to become dealership owners or general managers within his company. His verdict on the industry’s gatekeeping is blunt — minority dealers cannot wait on manufacturers to create Black-owned dealerships; ‘we have to do it ourselves.’

He received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, in 2019.

Face2Face Africa — “Starting out as a salesman, MLB first baseman Dorian Boyland has built a $650 million auto dealership”
Black Enterprise — “Former Pittsburgh Pirates First Baseman Owns the Third Largest Black-Owned Car Dealership”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  David Lamartiniere  ·  Eddie Hall III

Eddie Hall III

Chief Operating Officer, Hall Automotive Group — Royal Oak, MI

We’re inspired because Eddie Hall III treats a family business as a trust, not an inheritance.

He keeps showing up the way he did as a kid on those dealership weekends — and he spends his own time opening the industry’s doors for the dealers coming up behind him, leading the NextGen dealer organization and volunteering with Michigan high-school students.

“It is such an honor to be selected as Cox Automotive/NAMAD Rising Star for 2019. It is a proud accomplishment to be recognized in such a challenging and competitive industry. Being able to follow in my father’s footsteps and help lead the company is a dream come true.”

As an elementary- and middle-school student, Hall’s favorite thing in the world was spending weekends at the family’s dealership helping his father. He grew up inside the business one broom and one department at a time, and now serves as chief operating officer of Hall Automotive Group and as partner and dealer principal at Feldman Ford of Detroit.

The group runs Briarwood Ford, Royal Oak Ford, Northland Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram and Vicksburg Chrysler — including the only two African-American-owned Chrysler dealerships in Michigan — and he serves as the minority representative on the Ford National Dealer Council.

Cox Automotive and NAMAD named him their Rising Star, marking the award with a $5,000 donation in his honor to the University of Michigan and a disaster-response vehicle for the American Red Cross.

Cox Automotive — “Eddie Hall III Receives Cox Automotive and NAMAD Rising Star Award”
AutoRemarketing — “Cox Automotive Honors Michigan Dealer, Industry Rising Star”
PR Newswire — “Metro Detroit Auto Dealer Named Cox Automotive and NAMAD Rising Star”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Dorian Boyland  ·  Ernest Brown

Ernest Brown

Founder & President, Brown & Momen, Inc. — Chicago, IL

Official links: Website

Ernest Brown was a back-of-the-class kid at Chicago’s Dunbar Vocational High School, throwing spitballs during Career Day, until the speaker — Kenneth G. Groggs, Illinois’ first Black state architect — pointed out the window at his long black Mercedes, and the class sat up.

Groggs hired three Dunbar students as interns that summer, taught them business etiquette and dress, and set Brown on a path through a construction management and architecture degree at the University of Illinois Chicago to a career in scheduling and claims. In 1988 Brown founded Brown & Momen, Inc., a South Side general contractor.

Nearly thirty years later he pooled with rival Black firms he might once have bid against — Powers & Sons, UJAMAA and Safeway — in the Lakeside Alliance, so that together they could lead the construction of the Obama Presidential Center, choosing Turner Construction as their partner rather than waiting to be chosen.

"The world’s eyes are on the Obama Presidential Center project. So, with everything we do, we must do it with a purpose."

Brown runs his firm the way Groggs ran that Career Day: as a machine for opening doors.

Brown & Momen mentors emerging contractors and, by the roster’s account, advances them payroll and materials funds so small firms can actually carry big jobs — and Brown still goes back to Dunbar to do for students what Groggs did for him, showing them a $1.4 million project cheque to prove what a construction career can pay.

As a Lakeside Alliance principal he helped set ambitious goals for diverse-business participation and local workforce hours on the Obama Center, arguing that a project of that significance, watched by the whole world, has to be done with purpose.

Lakeside Alliance — “Ernest Brown Remembers Architect Kenneth G. Groggs” (his own first-person story)
Obama Foundation — “Obama Foundation Announces Lakeside Alliance as Construction Manager for Obama Presidential Center”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Eddie Hall III  ·  T. Dallas Smith

T. Dallas Smith

Founder & CEO, T. Dallas Smith & Company — Atlanta, GA

Official links: Website · LinkedIn

We’re inspired because T. Dallas Smith treated a magazine list as a syllabus. A teenager with index cards reverse-engineered how wealth is built, picked his lane, and then spent a career holding the door for the brokers behind him — he is known for being intentional about cultivating diverse talent in an industry that had almost none at the table.

“So I literally just backed into commercial real estate.”

At 19, when the first Forbes 400 list appeared, Smith wrote every name on it onto index cards — name, business, net worth — and studied them until a pattern emerged: the richest people in America built their fortunes in investments, oil, technology or real estate.

He chose real estate because it let him stay in Atlanta, and commercial work because it spared him weekends showing houses.

He became the first African American broker at Cushman & Wakefield of Georgia, pioneered the brokerage division of H.J. Russell & Company, then founded T. Dallas Smith & Company — today the largest African American-owned pure tenant-representation firm in the country, with team transactions exceeding $16 billion, more than 8 million square feet represented and over 5,000 acres of land acquisitions.

He serves on the Georgia Power board of directors and is a Junior Achievement of Georgia Business Hall of Fame inductee.

T. Dallas Smith & Company — founder biography
Nasdaq / Georgia Power — “T. Dallas Smith Named to Georgia Power Board of Directors”
KUT/KUTX “In Black America” — T. Dallas Smith interview transcript

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Ernest Brown  ·  Gregory Jackson

Gregory Jackson

Founder, President and CEO, Prestige Automotive Group — St. Clair Shores, MI

Official links: Website

Gregory Jackson started in the numbers. A Detroit native with an accounting degree from Morris Brown College and a master’s from Atlanta University, he worked as an accountant for Arthur Andersen & Company and as a controller before completing the General Motors Minority Dealer Training program in 1989.

In 1993 he launched Prestige Automotive Group and bought his first dealership with $150,000 of his life savings. GM lent him money to open the store and gave him up to seven years to pay it back; he paid it off in seven months, putting every extra penny toward the loan.

Then came a 12-year buying run that at its peak reached 18 dealerships. In 2005 Prestige grossed $1.67 billion, making Jackson the first Black auto dealer to surpass a billion dollars in annual sales — a milestone Black Enterprise marked by naming Prestige its 2005 Auto Dealer of the Year.

"Our service is key. Each employee will be passionate and have a caring spirit, which will allow us to present a great automotive buying experience."

Jackson has long spoken on the record about the structural barrier behind his own long odds: access to capital for minority dealers. Automotive News quoted that view directly, and Jackson served on the GM Minority Dealers Advisory Council, arguing minority dealers must show manufacturers profitability, market share and customer satisfaction — not just a social case.

Beyond the lots, his companies own the Copper Ridge Golf Course in Davison, Michigan, and have been restoring Detroit’s Lafayette Towers. Three decades after that first store, he was still running Prestige at its 30th anniversary.

Black Enterprise — “Billion-Dollar Dealer”
The HistoryMakers — “Gregory Jackson’s Biography”
F&I and Showroom — “Prestige Automotive Group Celebrates 30th Anniversary”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  T. Dallas Smith  ·  Isaac Hayes III

Isaac Hayes III

Founder & CEO, Fanbase — Atlanta, GA

Official links: Website · Instagram · X

Isaac Hayes III grew up watching what happens when a Black creator doesn’t own his work: his father, soul legend Isaac Hayes, lost the rights and royalties to his own Stax-era music, including the Oscar-winning Shaft soundtrack, after the label defaulted in 1976.

The son became a successful producer himself — and then watched a new generation repeat the pattern on social media, building dances, slang and audiences that made platforms rich while creators got ‘exposure.’

In 2019 he founded Fanbase in Atlanta, putting about $200,000 of his own royalty money into building a platform where every user can monetise from day one through subscriptions and virtual ‘loves.’ He deliberately bypassed venture-capital gatekeeping, raising the money instead through equity crowdfunding on StartEngine — directly from the community the platform serves.

"We have a plan, and we’re going to be able to scale and build the business in real time without having to stop and start and stop and start"

The crowdfunding became the headline: in 2024 Hayes became the first Black man to raise $10 million in a seed round via Regulation Crowdfunding on StartEngine, and by July 2025 Fanbase had crossed $12.7 million in its $17 million campaign, with everyday people able to invest for as little as $3.99.

His pitch is ownership as culture: Black culture, he argues, is the asset — the ‘vibranium’ — and creators should hold equity in the platforms it powers, not give it away for free. He says he always pays the lesson forward, teaching other founders how to raise capital the same way.

Black Enterprise — “Fanbase Checks Off Crossing Over $12.7M In Crowdfunding”
Atlanta Magazine — “Isaac Hayes III wants to help social media creators monetize their content”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Gregory Jackson  ·  James Reynolds Jr.

James Reynolds Jr.

Founder, Chairman & CEO, Loop Capital — Chicago, IL

Official links: Website

James ‘Jim’ Reynolds Jr. built his career the Wall Street way — senior roles at Paine Webber, where he established and led the Midwest municipal bond sales desk, and at Merrill Lynch, managing municipal securities distribution — before deciding, in 1997, to build a firm of his own.

The timing was forbidding: Black-owned investment banks were being decimated by Wall Street consolidation, disappearing one after another. Reynolds launched Loop Capital in Chicago as a municipal-bond firm anyway, and then refused to let it stay small.

Over four decades in finance, the Kellogg-trained CFA expanded Loop into a full-service, diversified investment bank — corporate finance, equity and fixed-income trading, public finance, infrastructure and asset management — that Loop itself describes, and the industry recognises, as one of the largest privately held investment banks in the United States.

Reynolds has turned Loop’s scale toward opening doors: the firm co-founded JLC Infrastructure with Magic Johnson Enterprises in 2015 to invest in American infrastructure, and its newest platforms work to move athletes and families from earning to ownership.

His civic footprint matches his firm’s — boards including the Chicago Community Trust, World Business Chicago and the Chicago Urban League, a Lincoln Leadership Prize and induction into the Bond Buyer Hall of Fame.

In 2025 Chicago’s mayor named him co-chair of the Chicago Financial Future Task Force, the civic body charting the city’s long-term fiscal health — the municipal-bond man, asked to help fix the city’s own finances.

Loop Capital — “Loop Capital Asset Management: Investment & Leadership Team” (firm bio of James Reynolds, Jr.)
Northwestern Kellogg School of Management — “Risk and reward” (Brave Leader Series profile)

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Isaac Hayes III  ·  Jimmy Akintonde

Jimmy Akintonde

Founder, President and CEO, Ujamaa Construction — Chicago, IL

Official links: Website

Jimmy Akintonde came to this country at 17 with a specific dream. ’I came over when I was 17 years old to build and to design high-rise buildings,’ he told WGN.

He emigrated from Nigeria, studied architecture at IIT — the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture — and spent his first nine years working for an established contractor, learning the business from the inside.

In 2002 he founded Ujamaa Construction in Chicago, naming it for the principle of cooperative economics and building it around a simple charge: rebuild the community. The firm, headquartered on Chicago’s South Side with a second office in Atlanta, grew into one of the city’s premier Black-owned general contractors.

As a partner in Lakeside Alliance — the joint venture of four Black-owned firms with Turner Construction — Ujamaa helped build the Obama Presidential Center, a seat at the table Akintonde has said diverse firms would not have gotten without the Obama Foundation’s commitment to local, diverse hiring.

"I came over when I was 17 years old to build and to design high-rise buildings."

Akintonde’s current work carries the same give-back logic. Through the Chicago Community Builders Collective, the minority-led joint venture building the Bally’s Chicago casino, he pushes workforce development — including internships for Chicago Public Schools students as a first step into the trades — and talks openly about role models and getting back up when the work gets hard.

At Lakeside Alliance he has reflected on how former competitors became collaborators and lifelong connections. Ujamaa marked 20 years in 2022 under a banner that sums up his whole career: rebuilding the community, one project at a time.

Chicago Community Builders Collective / WGN — “Building a casino and careers: Chicago contractor aims to build up next generation”
Black Enterprise — “Black Construction Companies Selected To Help Build $350 Million Obama Presidential Center”
Lakeside Alliance — “Jimmy Akintonde Shines a Light on Black History in the Making”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  James Reynolds Jr.  ·  John A. James

David Lamartiniere

President and Co-Founder, Lamar Homes Roofing & Construction — Raleigh, NC

Official links: Website

David Lamartiniere’s entrepreneurial streak showed up early — he was selling candy at a flea market at age 12, growing up around entrepreneur parents. As an adult he built a six-figure career selling Lexus automobiles, the kind of comfortable job most people hold onto. On May 12, 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, he quit it.

He moved back home to Raleigh, slept on the couch, and started a roofing company with his brother James. The bet paid off fast: by David’s account, Lamar Homes did a million dollars in revenue in its first year. Six years in, the brothers have built a duplex from the ground up, and David has retired his mother.

Their company, Lamar Homes Roofing & Construction, is family-owned and operated, GAF Certified, and has piled up more than 150 five-star Google reviews across the Triangle, handling everything from storm-damage insurance claims to full roof replacements.

Lamartiniere uses the company’s platform to give back locally: Lamar Homes runs an annual book bag drive — about 1,000 book bags this year — a Pink Out drive for breast cancer awareness, and a turkey drive. He also speaks openly about why skilled trades like roofing need more young people, and more Black owners.

His stated next chapter is new construction and affordable housing, and his long-term dream is to one day build a school and a church in Haiti.

Down To Business Podcast (YouTube) — “He Quit Selling Lexus, Slept on the Couch and Made $1M His First Year in Roofing”
Lamar Homes Roofing — company website (David and James Lamartiniere, President and Vice President)

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  C. David Moody  ·  Dorian Boyland