Some professionals got their start working in retail—but not nearly as many of those same workers made it all the way to the top of a Fortune 500 company. But Marvin Ellison did.
Ellison got his start making just $4.35 per hour working part-time at Target while he was in college at the University of Memphis. Now he’s president, CEO, and chairman of Lowe’s, a $127 billion home-improvement giant and one of only eight Black Fortune 500 CEOs. While that’s less than 2% of the entire group, it’s a record-high share of Black CEOs on the list.
Reflecting on the fact he’s only one of a few Black CEOs on the Fortune 500, Ellison said he has mixed emotions.
“On one hand, I feel incredibly privileged and blessed to be in this role because it gives me a chance to hopefully be a positive role model and create a pathway for other people who look like me,” Ellison said in a November 2022 interview with Daymond John, a Black entrepreneur most famous for his hip-hop apparel company FUBU and serving as an angel investor on Shark Tank.
“I’m really disappointed that … we still have such a significant gap in the capability that exists out there and the opportunities of individuals that look like me to be in a role like this,” said Ellison, who leads a Fortune 50 company with more than 1,700 stores and 300,000 associates in the U.S., according to Lowe’s.
