CAU-SBA 75th - Leaders and Luminaries

• Lorimer D. Milton Director/Dean -1946-1952
• Samuel Z. Westerfield Jr. Dean- 1952- 1961
• Harding B. Young Dean- 1961-1969
• Robert Vowels Dean- 1969-1978
• George Neffinger Acting Dean- 1976
• Augustus Sterne Dean- 1978-1982
• Roosevelt Thomas Dean- 1982-1983
• Johnnie Clark Dean- 1983-1985
• Robert Lynn Acting Dean-1985-1988

• Reverend C.J. Brown Principal, Business College -1883-1886
• George L. Griswold Head of the Department -1927-1930
• Adolphus B. Wright (AU '27) Department Chair -1930-1955
• Larzette G. (Hale) Wilson Department Chair -1955-1960
• William T. Robie (CC '48) Department Chair -1960-1966
• James A. Hefner (AU '62) Department Chair -1970
• Gladys W. Cothran Department Chair -1967-1969
• Barbara A.P. Jones Department Chair - 1971-1980
• Barbara M. Brown Department Chair - 1981-1984
• William H. Brown Acting Department Chair -1984-1989

BUSINESS EDUCATION 

• Gladys W. Cothran Chair, Business Education-1969-1970
• Jennye T. Harland Chair, Business Education 1970-1977
• Jane Dawkins Chair, Business Education 1978-2000

• Robert Lynn Acting Dean- 1988-1989
• Edward D. Irons Dean- 1990-1995
• Edward Davis Dean- 1999-2004; Acting Dean- 1995-1999, 2007-2010 | 2015-2017
• Jonathan Jefferson Dean- 2004-2007
• Lydia McKinley-Floyd Dean- 2010-2012
• Charles T. Moses Interim Dean- 2012-2015
• Kasim Alli Interim Dean- 2017-2018
• Silvanus J. Udoka Dean- 2018- Present 

• Atlanta University’s First Valedictorian (1876)
• First African American  to serve Paymaster in the US Army (1898)
• Founder of Citizens and Southern Bank & Trust Company,Philadelphia's first black-owned Trust Company (1921)
• Founder of the National Bankers Association (1927)

• Among the first graduates of Clark University’s Business College in 1884.
• Founded Tennessee’s third African American medical school, the Chattanooga National Medical College, (1898-1904)

• Among the first graduates of Clark University’s Business College in 1884.
• Merchant and South Atlanta’s first black Postmaster (1889).

• Founder, Cunningham & Sons, one of Atlanta’s first African American-owned real estate companies (1892)
• Member, Clark University Board of Trustees (1908-1932)

• Founder of Pace Phonograph Corporation and Black Swan Records, the first record label owned by an African American with wide distribution capabilities (1921).
• Founder of the Northeastern Life Insurance Company the largest African-American-owned business in the North during the 1930s.
• Chartered the Atlanta Branch of the NAACP in 1917 with Dr. Charles S. Johnson and fellow Alums: James Weldon Johnson (1894), Dr. Louis T. Wright (1911), and Walter Francis White (1916)

• Clark University Alumnus who becomes the first known African American graduate of Harvard Business School in 1915.
• Joins his father’s firm, Cunningham & Sons, one of Atlanta’s first African American-owned real estate companies in 1916.

• Son of Atlanta's first African-American millionaire businessman Alonzo F. Herndon and Adrienne Elizabeth McNeil Henderson, Atlanta University’s first director of dramatics and elocution in 1895
• Atlanta University Alumnus who becomes one of the first African Americans to graduate from  Harvard Business School in 1921.
• Succeeded his father as president of African American-owned Atlanta Life insurance Company in 1927 and grew its assets from $1M to $84M by 1973.
• Created the Alonzo F. and Norris B. Herndon Foundation to advance the Herndon legacy through education, mentoring, and preparing the next generation of entrepreneurs.

• Assoc. Professor who helped to build the Business Administration program at Bennett College
• Served as executive assistant to Clark College President James P. Brawley (1943-1950)

• Founded the nationally renowned Westside Preparatory School in Chicago
• Graduated Clark College with degree in Secretarial Sciences in Dept. of Business Administration

• Co-founded Atlanta’s first African American-owned Drugstore Chain, Yates & Milton Drugstore (1923) with Lorimer D. Milton, the first Dean of Atlanta University’s School of Business Administration.

• Co-founded the first Black-owned savings and loan in Milwaukee, Columbia Savings and Loan Association (1925).

• Chair of the Atlanta University Department of Mathematics (1930)
• Authored the study, Negro Business and Business Education which laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Atlanta University School of Business. (1944)

• Professor and first Chair of the Clark College Department of Business Administration (1930-1955).

• First woman to major in and receive a degree in business administration at Clark College.

• Co-Founder/Manager of the accredited Johnson Schools of Business in Little Rock, Ark and Jackson, MS
• Served as secretary at the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, while a graduate student

• First graduate of the Atlanta University School of Business Administration

• First woman to graduate from the Atlanta University School of Business Administration

• Minister of Finance, Federal Republic of Nigeria (1976-1977) 

• Chair/Founder, Cummings Investment Holdings
• EVP/Chief Administrative Officer, The Coca-Cola Company (2002-16)
• Board Chair, Clark Atlanta University Board of  Trustees (2013-2016) 

• Chief Executive and Executive Chairman, MTN Group, a pan-African and Middle Eastern mobile telecommunications company(2002-2011)