Businesspeople & Entrepreneurs
This general category includes a selection of more specific topics.
Businesspeople & Entrepreneurs Encyclopedia Articles
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J.P. Morgan
J.P. Morgan American financier and industrial organizer, one of the world’s foremost financial figures during the two pre-World War I decades. He reorganized several major railroads and financed industrial...
Nawaz Sharif
Nawaz Sharif Pakistani businessman and politician who served as prime minister in 1990–93, 1997–98, and 2013–17. After earning an LL.B. from the University of the Punjab in Lahore, Sharif joined his family’s...
Donald Trump
Donald Trump 45th president of the United States (2017–21). Trump was a real estate developer and businessman who owned, managed, or licensed his name to hotels, casinos, golf courses, resorts, and residential...
Indra Nooyi
Indra Nooyi Indian-born American businesswoman who was instrumental in the lucrative restructuring and diversification of soft-drink manufacturer PepsiCo, Inc.’s brands. Nooyi served as the company’s CEO...
Melinda Gates
Melinda Gates American businesswoman and philanthropist who—with her then husband, Microsoft Corporation cofounder Bill Gates—founded the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She first became interested...
Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, Inc., an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety...
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-born American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He was also one of the most important philanthropists...
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.), and a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer era. Jobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what is now...
Cecil Rhodes
Cecil Rhodes financier, statesman, and empire builder of British South Africa. He was prime minister of Cape Colony (1890–96) and organizer of the giant diamond-mining company De Beers Consolidated Mines,...
Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett American businessman and philanthropist, widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th and early 21st centuries, having defied prevailing investment trends to amass a personal...
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan Irish-born playwright, impresario, orator, and Whig politician. His plays, notably The School for Scandal (1777), form a link in the history of the comedy of manners between the...
Charles and David Koch
Charles and David Koch American brothers who were majority co-owners of the energy conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., and major financial supporters of libertarian and conservative causes in the United...
Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi Italian media tycoon who served three times as prime minister of Italy (1994, 2001–06, and 2008–11). After graduating from the University of Milan with a degree in law, Berlusconi became...
Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch Australian-born American newspaper publisher and media entrepreneur who founded (1979) the global media holding company the News Corporation Ltd.—often called News Corp. It focused on publishing...
Horacio Cartes
Horacio Cartes is a Paraguayan businessman and politician who was elected president of Paraguay in 2013, thereby restoring executive power to the centre-right Colorado Party, which had lost the presidency...
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is an American television personality, actress, and entrepreneur whose syndicated daily talk show was among the most popular of the genre. She became one of the richest and most influential...
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg American computer programmer who was cofounder and CEO (2004– ) of Facebook, a social networking website. After attending Phillips Exeter Academy, Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard University...
Viola Desmond
Viola Desmond Canadian businesswoman and civil libertarian who built a career as a beautician and was a mentor to young Black women in Nova Scotia through her Desmond School of Beauty Culture. It is, however,...
Elizabeth Holmes
Elizabeth Holmes American entrepreneur who was founder and CEO (2003–18) of the medical diagnostic company Theranos Inc. In 2014 she was dubbed the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire, but, by...
William George Fargo
William George Fargo was an American businessman who was one of the pioneering founders of Wells, Fargo & Company. Fargo was born into the farming family of William C. and Tracy Strong Fargo and would...
Saad al-Hariri
Saad al-Hariri Saudi-born Lebanese businessman and prime minister of Lebanon (2009–11; 2016–20). The son of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic al-Hariri, Saad entered politics following his father’s...
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes American manufacturer, aviator, and motion-picture producer and director who acquired enormous wealth and celebrity from his various ventures but was perhaps better known for his eccentricities,...
Mateusz Morawiecki
Mateusz Morawiecki is a Polish banker, economist, and politician who served as prime minister of Poland (2017–23). Morawiecki, who had been serving as deputy prime minister and finance minister and minister...
Walter P. Chrysler
Walter P. Chrysler American engineer and automobile manufacturer, founder of Chrysler Corporation. (Read Lee Iacocca’s Britannica entry on Chrysler.) Chrysler was the third of four children of Henry (“Hank”)...
Ursula Burns
Ursula Burns American business executive who served as CEO (2009–16) and chairman (2010–17) of the international document-management and business-services company Xerox Corporation. She was the first African...
Marc Ravalomanana
Marc Ravalomanana Malagasy entrepreneur and politician who served as president of Madagascar (2002–09). Ravalomanana had a Protestant education, first by missionaries in his native village of Imerikasina,...
George M. Pullman
George M. Pullman American industrialist and inventor of the Pullman sleeping car, a luxurious railroad coach designed for overnight travel. In 1894 workers at his Pullman’s Palace Car Company initiated...
Jacques Coeur
Jacques Coeur was a wealthy and powerful French merchant, who served as a councillor to King Charles VII of France. His career remains a significant example of the spirit of enterprise and the social progress...
Ricardo Martinelli
Ricardo Martinelli Panamanian businessman and politician who served as president of Panama (2009–14). Martinelli was educated primarily in the United States; he attended Staunton Military Academy in Virginia...
Henry Ford
Henry Ford American industrialist who revolutionized factory production with his assembly-line methods. (Read Henry Ford’s 1926 Britannica essay on mass production.) Ford spent most of his life making...
Madam C.J. Walker
Madam C.J. Walker American businesswoman and philanthropist who was one of the first African American female millionaires in the United States. The first child in her family born after the Emancipation...