Sheila C. Johnson, 1949

Sheila Crump was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in Illinois. She found her love for music at an early age, becoming an accomplished violinist by 9. In 1970, at the age of 21, she received her B.A. in music performance and education from the University of Illinois and moved to Washington, DC, with her first husband, Robert Johnson. There, she worked as a violin instructor at a private school and gave private violin lessons to supplement her income. Within four years, her private lessens business grew, and when she had 100 students, she left her position at school and founded a youth orchestra called Young Strings in Action, which performed both in the US and abroad.

In 1980, Johnson and her husband founded Black Entertainment Television (BET), a cable network that approached African American viewers. She closed her music business and became the network’s community relations manager and the producer of teenagers’ talk shows. By the late 1990s, BET took a raunchy direction, and Johnson became concerned about its sexually explicit content and how it portrays and influences young women. In 1999, she began to pursue other business opportunities and sold BET to Viacom for an overall sum of $3 billion, making her, at the age of 53, the first black woman billionaire in the US.

In 2005, Johnson married William T. Newman, Jr., divorcing her first husband three years earlier. She purchased a 350-acre estate in Middleburg, Virginia, and built the Salamander Inn & Spa, founding Salamander Hospitality LLC, a hotel resort and spa management firm. During this period, Johnson became the majority owner of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, serving as its President and Managing Partner.

A woman of varied interests, Johnson is also involved in the film industry. Since 2008, she has produced numerous films, all with humanitarian messages – Kicking It, A Powerful Noise, She Is the Matador, The Other City, and the critically acclaimed film The Butler.

Throughout the years, Johnson spent much of her time and fortune on philanthropic work. She donated money to various institutes, including the United Negro College Fund, Howard University, and the Parsons School of Design. She founded the Sheila Crump Johnson Institute at the State University of New York to support the college community diversity and co-founded the WE Capital consortium to aid female-led enterprises. Johnson sits on the boards of many organizations; among them are the Americans for the Arts, the University of Illinois Foundation, the Curry School of Education, VH1’s Save the Music Foundation, and the Greater Washington Partnership.