Susan Taylor

Susan L. Taylor, best-selling author of four books, and editor of eight others, is a fourth-generation entrepreneur, who grew up in Harlem working in her father’s clothing store. At 24, she founded her own cosmetics company, which led to the beauty editor’s position at Essence, the publication she would go on to shape into a world-renown brand with more than 8 million readers. It was that enterprising spirit wedded to a deep love for her community that led to the founding of the National CARES Mentoring Movement in 2005 as Essence CARES. With local affiliates in 58 cities, National CARES has recruited, trained and deployed more than 140,000 mentors to schools and youth-support and mentoring organizations like Big Brothers, Big Sisters, as well as in its own culturally rooted, academic and social transformational initiatives. A community-mobilization movement, National CARES is the only organization dedicated to providing mentoring, healing and wellness services on a national scale for Black children.

A lifelong activist who has worked to ensure people across the globe, from South Africa to those who struggled in the wake of Katrina, Susan says, securing our children is her highest calling and the big business of Black America today.