Image: Branding Magazine
Raised by Single Mothers: The Builders Behind Byron Allen, Jan Koum, Pat McGrath, Donna Karan and Robert Reffkin
A mother's sacrifice, a child's empire. Ten founders whose first investor, first teacher and first example of endurance was one woman doing the work of two.
Produced and Edited by The Bourgeois Society Staff
Some of these ten were raised by single mothers — a teenage mom in Detroit, a babysitter in Mountain View, a Jamaican dressmaker in Northampton, a showroom model on Long Island.
Others know the story from the other side of the kitchen table: mothers who raised children alone while building the company, and kept a childhood promise to buy their own mother a house.
What they share is the household math of one income, one pair of hands and no margin for quitting — and what they built with it: media empires, the world's messaging app, the largest private staffing firm on earth, a billion-dollar beauty line and America's largest independent brokerage.
Selected on the obstacle climbed, the thing built, and the good given back — and fact-checked line by line, with sources linked under every profile.
Co-founder, WhatsApp — Mountain View, CA
Official links: Website · Facebook · X
Image: Shutterstock
Why We're Inspired
Jan Koum arrived in Mountain View, California, at 16, immigrating from Ukraine with his single mother and grandmother.
A support programme helped the family into a small two-bedroom apartment; they relied on food stamps, his mother babysat, and Koum worked as a cleaner at a local grocery store while teaching himself programming from manuals — he did not own a computer. The self-taught skill carried him to Yahoo!, where he spent nine years and met Brian Acton.
In 2009 the two left and built WhatsApp, a messaging app shaped by Koum's Soviet childhood: private, simple and accessible. Five years after launch, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, and Koum's stake made him about $6.8 billion richer, according to the Forbes account carried by Advisorpedia.
"I grew up in a society where everything you did was eavesdropped on, recorded, snitched on. I had friends when we were kids getting into trouble for telling anecdotes about Communist leaders."
The Story
The full-circle detail is the one everyone remembers, because Koum chose it himself: he signed the Facebook paperwork at the former welfare office where his family had once collected food stamps.
His mother did not live to see that day — she died in 2000 — but the household she held together in a government-assisted apartment produced the founder of what became the world's top messaging app. WhatsApp was built lean and quiet, without advertising — a product, in its bones, about the privacy his childhood never had.
Sources
YesPress — “Jan Koum — WhatsApp Founder, Billionaire Investor”
Advisorpedia — “Home of the Free, Land of the Entrepreneur”
Alma — “Jan Koum's Immigration Story: Refugee to $19B Tech Exit”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Byron Allen · Leticia Snoddy
Founder, Chairman & CEO, Allen Media Group / Entertainment Studios — Los Angeles, CA
Official links: Website · X
Image: Branding Magazine
Why We're Inspired
Byron Allen was born in Detroit in 1961 to a mother who was just 17 — in his words, no one was betting on a Black teenage girl and a Black baby boy born without civil rights.
After his parents separated, mother and son moved to Los Angeles, where Carolyn Folks worked at NBC and young Byron roamed the studios, started stand-up at 14, and became the youngest comedian ever on The Tonight Show at 18.
In 1993 he founded Entertainment Studios from his dining room table, cold-calling 1,300 TV stations and offering his show free in exchange for half the advertising time. The early years were brutal: his home went in and out of foreclosure, his phones were shut off, and some days he did not eat.
He never gave up the company — he built it, station by station, into a media empire he still runs.
"I'm not here to play the game, I'm here to reinvent the game."
The Story
Today Allen Media Group owns 10 cable networks including The Weather Channel — bought in 2018 in a deal reported at about $300 million — plus TheGrio, dozens of broadcast TV stations and more than 70 syndicated shows, and in 2026 Allen agreed to take a controlling stake in BuzzFeed for $120 million.
Giving back was built in early: at his first Oscars gala he pledged to raise $50 million over 10 years for Children's Hospital Los Angeles. His goal, he told Variety, is to build the world's biggest media company and use it to effect change for the greater good.
Sources
Branding Magazine — “The C-Suite: Byron Allen, Founder of Entertainment Studios”
Tech Daily Post (Variety/AfroTech-sourced) — “Billionaire Byron Allen Reflects On The Struggles He Faced While Building Allen Media Group”
Beverly Hills Courier — “Byron Allen: How His Extraordinary Journey Created a Media Empire”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Robert Reffkin · Jan Koum
Founder, MSIL Staffing & Packaging — Indianapolis, IN
Official links: Website
Image: MS-IL Group
Why We're Inspired
Leticia Snoddy was the oldest of five children raised by a mother working 10- to 12-hour factory days — and at seven years old she promised to buy her mother a house one day. She kept the promise: by her third or fourth year in business, she had bought her mother a house and a car.
Snoddy launched MSIL Staffing in Indianapolis in 2001 as a single mom, running it out of her basement, with day-one clients drawn from relationships built over six years learning the staffing business from the front of house to the back.
The company turned cash-flow positive within two to three years, and the original seven team members who started with her are all still with the company a quarter-century later.
"single mom, where's my next check coming from? I had to go out and find it"
The Story
The growth came from saying yes and figuring it out: MSIL expanded beyond light-industrial staffing into Pro Talent Group executive recruiting and Certified Inspection Services, whose roughly 250 employees inspect engines for some 200 automotive suppliers, and the group has staffed sports venues for nearly twenty years.
When a workers' compensation crisis threatened the business, Snoddy joined a captive programme alongside 150 other agencies who became collaborators. And when a partner split forced her to rebuild the company from the ground up, she rebuilt it — the same way her mother's factory shifts taught her to: show up, do the work, keep the people.
Sources
Inspired Stories Podcast — “Indianapolis Woman-Owned Business: Leticia Snoddy's 25-Year MSIL Staffing Journey”
Self-Made Is a Myth (via Listen Notes) — “#224: Move Too Slowly on Technology and You Lose Ground | MS-IL Group — Leticia Snoddy”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Jan Koum · Lindsay Hancock
Founder, My Better Batch
Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Instagram
Image: PR Newswire / My Better Batch
Why We're Inspired
Lindsay Hancock helped build a food company from its first desk: she was Employee #1 at Creative Snacks, the North Carolina snack maker whose 2018 revenues reached $55 million before KIND Snacks acquired it in October 2019 — KIND's first-ever acquisition. Hancock went on to lead sales at KIND.
Then came the second act nobody plans: divorce left her a single mom of two at 40, and she walked away from a secure, thriving career with no safety net to start over.
In April 2024 she shipped the first order for My Better Batch, her clean-label cookie-mix brand built on a busy parent's insight — that the shortcut on the shelf should taste like the homemade cookie you actually want to eat.
"There's nothing quite like being a newly single mom, walking away from a secure, thriving career, and starting over."
The Story
My Better Batch mixes are non-GMO and need only butter and an egg, and the brand moved fast: Sprouts, Thrive Market, Lowe's Foods, The Fresh Market, Metropolitan Market and Target — where Hancock was accepted into the Target Accelerator programme — plus a Good Housekeeping Best Snack Award for the Chocolate Chunk mix.
Hancock says she built the brand for parents like her, who want to show up and make something special without the guilt — and to show her boys that you can face a hard season head-on and come out stronger on the other side.
Sources
Women's Business Daily — “From Corporate Leader to Cookie Queen: Lindsay Hancock's Recipe for Working Mom Success”
The Startup CPG Podcast — “Founder Feature: Lindsay Hancock of My Better Batch” (transcript)
Industrial Equipment News — “KIND Completes First Acquisition”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Leticia Snoddy · Nate Morris
Founder, Rubicon Technologies; Founder and Chairman, Morris Industries — Lexington, KY
Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · X
Image: George Washington University
Why We're Inspired
Nate Morris is a ninth-generation Kentuckian whose family descends from Morgan County, in the heart of Appalachia. A product of public schools, he was raised in a union household by a single mother, and scholarships carried him forward — by 21 he had already worked in the U.S. House and Senate, the Department of Labor and the White House.
In 2008 he founded Rubicon with $10,000 on a credit card, building a waste-and-recycling technology platform that grew to operations in 50 states and 20 countries, with customers including Walmart and Starbucks.
He led a $2 billion transaction to take Rubicon public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: RBT) — only the ninth Kentucky company to list there in the exchange's long history.
"My mother was a single mother. Scholarships were very important to me in my life and Rotarians stepped up for me,"
The Story
Morris was the first Kentuckian named to Fortune's 40 Under 40 list and is the youngest inductee ever into the Kentucky Entrepreneur Hall of Fame.
He now chairs Morris Industries in Lexington and campaigns on waste — especially e-waste — as a national-security threat, arguing that technology should solve problems for everyday Americans and level the playing field for small, minority-owned and women-owned businesses.
Through the Morris Foundation, his stated mission is access to the American Dream for all Kentuckians — the same scholarship ladder that lifted a single mother's son, extended to the next kid in line.
Sources
eNewsChannels — “CEO Nate Morris Discusses Founding of Rubicon and National Security Implications of e-Waste”
University of Kentucky, Gatton College of Business and Economics — “Nate Morris”
Concordia — “Nate Morris”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Lindsay Hancock · Patty Arvielo
Co-founder and CEO, New American Funding
Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram · X
Image: New American Funding
Why We're Inspired
Patty Arvielo's story runs in both directions on this list. She is the daughter of a maid: her mother Carmen, an immigrant from Mexico, cleaned houses and offices, and Patty was helping her from age 12.
At 16 she started at TransUnion as a data input clerk, then learned mortgage lending from the ground up at Countrywide — experience she calls her 'college equivalency' — rising to branch manager and assistant vice president.
And she knows the single-mother chapter firsthand: she found herself a single mother of two at 29, and had to find a more flexible way to work and care for her young children.
In 2003 she co-founded New American Funding with her husband Rick, and built it into the largest Hispanic woman-owned private mortgage company in the United States, with more than $33 billion in home loans originated.
"I am the daughter of a maid – if I can achieve the American Dream, so can you!"
The Story
Arvielo built the company around the communities she came from: New American Funding is known for its outreach to Black and Latino homebuyers, and she launched its Latino Focus and New American Dream initiatives to improve the lending experience for Latino and Black families.
The circle closed the way it should: she bought her mother a house in Corona del Mar, and Vanguard University named its business school for her. Her advice to founders is pure house-cleaning childhood: hold onto your equity as long as you can — that, she says, is the key to true generational wealth.
Sources
L.A. STYLE Magazine — “Patty Arvielo: From Immigrant Roots to CEO of New American Funding”
Hispanic Executive — “Patty Arvielo Knows Home Is Where the Heart Is”
VoyageLA — “Meet Patty Arvielo of New American Funding”
Newport Beach Independent — “Local Immigrant Mother Inspires Successful Latina Business Owner Daughter”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Nate Morris · Steve Bisciotti
Co-founder, Allegis Group / Aerotek; Owner, Baltimore Ravens — Millersville, MD
Official links: Website
Image: CBS Sports
Why We're Inspired
Steve Bisciotti was the youngest of three children in a working-class Italian-American family in Severna Park, Maryland. When he was eight, his father Bernard — a construction sales executive — died of leukemia, and his mother Patricia raised the three children, with support from his maternal grandfather.
Bisciotti graduated from Salisbury State University in 1982, and a year later, at 23, he and his cousin Jim Davis started Aerotek, a staffing company for the aerospace and technology sectors, out of a basement office with secondhand equipment. They produced $1.5 million in sales in the first year.
Aerotek grew into the Allegis Group, now the largest privately held staffing firm in the world, and Forbes has estimated Bisciotti's fortune at about $7.1 billion.
The Story
In 2000 Bisciotti bought 49% of the Baltimore Ravens, and in 2004 he purchased the majority stake — bringing the hometown team he had grown up watching with his family under local ownership.
One of his first projects was the team's state-of-the-art training facility, 'The Castle,' which opened in 2004, and the Ravens won the Super Bowl in 2013 under his majority ownership.
He remains famously low-profile for a man who owns both an NFL team and the world's largest private staffing company — the local kid, raised by his mother after losing his dad at eight, who made good and stayed.
Sources
Wikipedia — “Steve Bisciotti”
Pro Football Network — “Steve Bisciotti's Net Worth: How the Baltimore Ravens Owner Made His Fortune”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Patty Arvielo · Pat McGrath
Founder, Pat McGrath Labs; Creative Director of Cosmetics, La Beauté Louis Vuitton — Northampton / London, England
Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X
Image: Nick Harvey / WireImage via Getty Images, published by Tatler Asia
Why We're Inspired
This is the right Pat McGrath: Dame Patricia Ann McGrath, the British makeup artist Vogue calls the most influential in the world. She was raised in a working-class household in Northampton, England, by her single mother Jean, a Jamaican immigrant and dressmaker raising her children largely alone.
Because there was no makeup made for Black skin, Jean mixed her own colours — and trained her daughter at home, quizzing her on eyeshadow shades as they watched classic films together.
McGrath has recalled that her mother 'was always mixing up colours because there wasn't anything out there for black skin.' She has no formal makeup training — only an art foundation course — and was still working as a receptionist in the early 1990s while breaking into fashion through i-D magazine and Edward Enninful, before designers including Alexander McQueen and John Galliano made her the defining artist of the runway era.
"I really love being a makeup artist. It never gets mundane or predictable and every shoot and show is different."
The Story
In 2015 McGrath launched Pat McGrath Labs, which by 2019 had become a $1 billion company and Selfridges' biggest-selling beauty line, built on the inclusivity her mother had to improvise at home.
She was named to TIME100 in 2019 and in 2021 became the first makeup artist ever made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to fashion and beauty and to diversity. In March 2025 Louis Vuitton named her Creative Director of Cosmetics for La Beauté Louis Vuitton, launched that August.
Her current chapter also carries a hard turn the profile must not omit: in January 2026 Pat McGrath Labs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, halting a planned asset auction while it restructures.
Sources
Wikipedia — “Pat McGrath (make-up artist)”
BlackPast — “Patricia Ann McGrath (1970- )”
USA TODAY — “Beauty brand Pat McGrath Labs files Chapter 11 bankruptcy”
Tatler Asia — “What is beauty in the eyes of makeup artist Pat McGrath?”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Steve Bisciotti · Donna Karan
Founder, Donna Karan International / DKNY; Founder, Urban Zen — New York, NY
Official links: Website · Instagram
Image: SoCal Pulse
Why We're Inspired
Donna Karan was born Donna Faske in Forest Hills, Queens. Her father Gabriel, a custom tailor, died when she was three, and she and her older sister Gail were raised by their mother Helen — a showroom model and saleswoman — in Woodmere, Long Island, in the garment world's shadow.
After Parsons School of Design, Karan joined Anne Klein and rose to head the design team. When Klein died of cancer in 1974, Karan — who had given birth to a daughter just two days earlier — took over the line at 26.
In 1984 she left to launch her own company, showing her first collection in 1985: the famous 'Seven Easy Pieces' built around the bodysuit, designed, she always insisted, only in clothes she would wear herself. DKNY, her younger, less expensive line, followed.
"I was born into fashion. My father, a tailor, died, and that led me to Seventh Avenue. My mentor Anne Klein died, and I was named her successor — and at the same time, I became a mother."
The Story
Donna Karan International went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1996, having become a half-billion-dollar fashion force in little more than a decade. In 2001 LVMH acquired the company, paying $243 million for DKI and an additional $400 million for the Donna Karan trademarks.
After her husband Stephan Weiss's death, Karan founded the Urban Zen Foundation in 2007, funding integrative patient care, education and preservation of cultures — a fifty-year career, from a tailor's daughter raised by a working mother, built entirely on dressing working women like they mattered. Because hers did.
Sources
FashionUnited (WWD) — “Donna Karan set to write memoir”
Wikipedia — “Donna Karan”
Reference for Business — “Donna Karan Company: Business Information, Profile, and History”
Fibre2Fashion (WWD) — “Donna Karan steps down as chief designer at DKI”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Pat McGrath · Robert Reffkin
Co-founder & CEO, Compass — New York, NY
Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram · X
Image: Brad Barket/Getty Images for Fast Company, via Business Insider
Why We're Inspired
Robert Reffkin grew up in Berkeley with his mother Ruth, an Israeli immigrant who was disowned by her own parents for her relationship with his Black father — who then abandoned the family and died when Robert was 11.
Ruth raised him alone, juggling jobs and working as a real estate agent, sometimes coming home in tears when a cheque she was counting on fell through. The teenage Reffkin cared more about his DJ business than homework, and he has recounted being told by a college advisor not to bother applying to an Ivy League school.
He applied anyway, finished Columbia at speed, and worked at McKinsey, Lazard and Goldman Sachs, becoming one of the youngest-ever White House Fellows. In 2012 he co-founded Compass — inspired by watching his mother's hardships as an agent — and built it into the largest independent real estate brokerage in America.
"Growing up, it was just me and my mom. She's an Israeli immigrant, disowned by her parents because I was Black."
The Story
Reffkin's giving-back started before Compass: he founded New York Needs You, now America Needs You, to mentor first-generation, low-income college students — and raised $1 million for the cause by running a marathon in all 50 states.
His 2021 book No One Succeeds Alone distils the lessons his mother and mentors taught him, and all author proceeds are donated to nonprofits that help young people realise their dreams. Compass's stated mission — to help everyone find their place in the world — is, in his telling, his mother's story turned into a company.
Sources
TechCrunch — “How Robert Reffkin went from being a C-average student to the founder of Compass”
Business Insider (via Latest Nigerian News) — “Compass CEO Robert Reffkin was a real estate outsider and may end up a brokerage billionaire anyway”
Inman — “Robert Reffkin Gets Real At Annual Compass REtreat: 'Hope Is Not A Strategy'”
More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list · Donna Karan · Byron Allen