Stanford Thompson, musician

TheDailyBeast: America’s Up-and-Coming African-American Leaders

Nominated by: Douglas McLennan, director, National Arts Journalism Program; founder and editor, ArtsJournal; board of overseers, Curtis Institute of Music

Thompson is a trumpet player who studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and started Play On, Philly!, a kids’ orchestra program in poor areas of Philadelphia. In less than two years, Play On, Philly! has developed a strong following, teaching more than 200 kids for three hours daily. Yo-Yo Ma, Simon Rattle, and other classical-music stars have contributed time to the program. "If I can teach a kid how to play a Beethoven symphony, I absolutely know that kid's life will be better," Thompson has said.

“Stanford is an extraordinary kid who could have had a career in an important orchestra but is impacting the lives of hundreds of families with his program,” McLennan said in an email.

(Photo: Victoria Will / AP Photo)

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Up-and-Coming Af...

From the first black woman to win Sundance’s Best Director award to the CEO of a mobile gaming company, from a brilliant astrophysicist training young South Africans to a trumpet player bringing music to Philly’s urban centers, The Daily Beast has identified some of the rising black leaders in the arts, technology, politics, and more.

In honor of Black History Month, we reached out to established experts across the spectrum and asked them to name up-and-coming African-American leaders who are poised to make a big difference in the United States and the world.

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Iconic African Americans

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Dr. John H. Jack...

Nominated by: Dr. Pedro Noguera, Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education, New York University

A Harvard Law alum and former national education director at the NAACP, Jackson is president of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. As a member of President Obama’s Education Policy Transition Work Group, Jackson had the opportunity to bend the president’s ear on national education policy, with a group-wide focus on early-childhood education and recruiting new teachers, as Obama transitioned into office in 2009.

Jackson speaks out on education issues nationwide and leads the National Opportunity to Learn Campaign, an organization that “has drawn attention to the many ways in which students, especially poor and minority, are denied basic learning opportunities,” Noguera said in an email. “He also has been a leader in drawing attention to the plight of black male students in American schools, who are notoriously underserved.”

(Photo: Schott Foundation for Public Education)

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Stanford Thompso...

Nominated by: Douglas McLennan, director, National Arts Journalism Program; founder and editor, ArtsJournal; board of overseers, Curtis Institute of Music

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Iconic Moments in Black History

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Ava DuVernay, fi...

Nominated by: Gil Robertson IV, president and cofounder of the African-American Film Critics Association

DuVernay began her career as a publicist working on high-profile campaigns for films such as “Scary Movie,” “Collateral,” “Dreamgirls,” and “Invictus.” “In a very short time she has made an indelible imprint in Hollywood,” Robertson said via email. “She has also established herself as a promising filmmaker with a growing list of film titles (“I Will Follow” and the upcoming “Middle of Nowhere”) that provide a refreshing look at contemporary urban culture.”

“Young, savvy, and equally adept at developing serious literary works and surefire popular hits, Davis is a rising star in the publishing world,” Banks said by email. Her dual appointment at Ecco and Amistad, he said, “should make her a fascinating force to reckon with in decades to come.”

(Photo: Victoria Will / AP Photo)

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Dawn Davis, publ...

Nominated by: Eric Banks, president, National Book Critics Circle

In 2010 it was a big year for Davis, who ascended to publisher of Amistad, HarperCollins’s African-American imprint, and also became the executive editor of Ecco. As editorial director at Amistad for the last decade, Davis turned the imprint into a powerhouse for black letters, producing bestselling titles such as Edward P. Jones's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Known World” and Paula Giddings's biography of Ida B. Wells.

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Anthony Foxx, ma...

Nominated by: Mike Wenger, senior fellow, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

At 38, Anthony Foxx is “an up-and-coming person in politics,” Wenger says. After a successful legal career, a stint as a city councilman, and election as Charlotte’s 54th mayor in 2009, Foxx landed a major political coup last year when Charlotte was selected to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention. When North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue announced in January she would not seek reelection, Foxx’s name popped up on the shortlist of candidates to seek the Democratic nomination.

Foxx decided to sit out the gubernatorial race this time around, but he has plenty of time to make his move to higher office. After all, the DNC’s 2004 keynote speaker was a young and virtually unknown state senator from Illinois.

(Photo: Mark Lennihan / AP Photo)

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Kamala Harris, a...

Nominated by: Mike Wenger

Harris holds a lot of firsts: the first female, first African-American, and first Asian-American California attorney general. The New York Times recently lauded her for her slick and confident, if risky, handling of a nationwide foreclosure-lawsuit settlement, which ultimately netted her state the biggest chunk of benefit dollars.

“She’s written a good bit on reducing crime and recidivism, and she is a potential governor of California,” Wenger says. That is, assuming she doesn’t get an even more high-profile job. With a slew of caveats (that Barack Obama is reelected, that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires), Harris is the most likely candidate to land a Supreme Court nomination in 2015, according to SCOTUSBlog. And she’s only 47.

In March, Harris will participate in a panel discussion on women and justice as part of Newsweek/The Daily Beast’s Women in the World Summit.

(Photo: Michael Kovac / Getty Images for One Voice)

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Charles Hudson, ...

Nominated by: Angela Benton, founder, BlackWebMedia, Black Web 2.0, and tech accelerator NewME

Charles Hudson is “one of the few people that's able to do two things really well at the same time,” Benton said in an email. He’s a venture capitalist at a firm called SoftTech VC, in an industry that doesn’t yet have many black faces. He's also CEO of Bionic Panda Games, a mobile gaming company for the Android platform. In a 2011 interview, Hudson explained that his day starts at 5 a.m. and his weeks are methodically planned to accommodate both full-time endeavors. “Charles's dedication has allowed him to break stereotypes in both tech entrepreneurship and venture capital,” Benton said.

In addition to managing a full plate, Hudson blogs—a must for anyone in the tech world (he’s been doing it since way back in 2003)—covering a wide range of tech topics, from e-books to search-engine optimization to social media.

(Photo: David Paul Morris, Bloomberg / Getty Images)

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