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Starting with a single Washington, D.C. radio station bought on a small business loan in 1980, Cathy Hughes built Urban One into 50-plus stations, TV One, and digital platforms reaching 80 percent of the U.S. Black audience — becoming the first African American woman to chair a publicly traded corporation.
Cathy Hughes is the founder and chairperson of Urban One, the largest African American-owned multimedia company in the United States.
She founded Radio One in 1980 with a single Washington, DC, station purchased with a small business loan and grew it into a network of over 50 stations, the TV One cable channel, and Reach Media. In 1999, she became the first African American woman to chair a publicly traded company on NASDAQ.
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