Black History Month Speaker: Shawn D. Rochester

Please join Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management for the Black History Month Speaker: Shawn D. Rochester on Friday, Feb. 26 at 4:00 p.m. This event is hosted by the Whitman School’s Office for Institutional Culture, student inclusion leaders (Omari Romain ’21 and Jared Byrd ’23).

Shawn D. Rochester is the CEO of Good Steward LLC (GSL), founder of PHD Enterprises, and the IDEA Institute. These organizations provide financial education and advisory services to consumers, increase Black employees and enterprises in U.S. public and private sectors payroll and supply chains, and facilitate commerce between the Black business community across the African Diaspora and on the African content.

Rochester is the author of the book The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America. This book lays out an extraordinarily compelling case that documents the enormous financial cost of current and past anti-black discrimination on African American households. He then establishes a framework that Black Americans and other concerned parties can use to eliminate this tax and help create the six million jobs and 1.4 million businesses missing from the Black community.

This discussion with be moderated by Herbert G. Ruffin II, associate professor of African-American Studies at Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences.