Chairman & CEO
Essence Communications Partners
2003 Robert C. Maynard Legend Award
As chairman and CEO of Essence Communications Partners, Edward Lewis heads one of the most successful and diverse African American-owned communications companies in the United States. He co-founded Essence in 1969 with Clarence O. Smith. Essence has evolved into one of the leading lifestyle magazines for African American women, with a paid circulation of one million and a readership of 7.5 million.
In October 2000, Essence Communications, Inc. signed an agreement Time Inc, a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner, to form a joint venture known as Essence Communication Partners. Under his leadership Essence Communications Partners is one of the country’s most successful and diverse African-American-owned media companies.
Lewis expanded his publishing realm with the acquisition of Income Opportunities in 1992. At that time, the magazine was for people starting new businesses. Three years later, Lewis entered in a joint venture to publish Latina, the first bilingual lifestyle magazine that addresses the interests of Hispanic women in the United States.
Lewis began his career in the late 1960s at First National City Bank in New York (now Citibank). At a conference he attended on blacks in business, sponsored by a Wall Street brokerage firm, the concept of a fashion magazine for Black women was discussed. Lewis left the bank to become the financial manager and later the publisher of Essence.
Lewis is a stalwart advocate of civil rights and community involvement, contributing both personal time and financial support to a number of civic, educational and arts organizations. He has fought for change on numerous fronts and has worked with the nation’s other African-American leaders to confront the issues of affirmative action, social justice, and political and economic empowerment. He has also established scholarships in political science, journalism and communications at his alma mater, the University of New Mexico.
In 1997, Lewis was named chairman of the Magazine Publishers of America and became the first African American to lead the 700-magazine trade group. Lewis received MPA’s lifetime achievement award, named The Henry Johnson Fisher Award, in 2002. In 1998, Lewis became the first African American to receive the Media-Bridge-Builder Award from the Tannenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding.