Tristan Walker

Tristan Walker was born on 5 July 1984 in Queens, New York. His father was murdered when he was three, and he grew up in the Queens projects, earning a scholarship to the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and graduating in 2002. He went on to graduate as valedictorian in economics from Stony Brook University in 2005.

Walker began his career as an energy trader at Lehman Brothers and then J.P. Morgan, one of few Black men on the trading floor, before moving into technology. He interned at Twitter, then became the director of business development at Foursquare and an entrepreneur-in-residence at the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, after completing his MBA at Stanford.

The idea for his company came from his own experience of razor bumps, which standard razors had never been designed to address for people with coarse hair. In 2013 he founded Walker & Company, whose flagship brand Bevel made a single-blade razor and grooming system for men of colour, with investors including Magic Johnson, John Legend and Andre Iguodala.

Bevel won distribution in Target and Walmart, and in December 2018 Procter & Gamble acquired Walker & Company. Walker stayed on as chief executive of the subsidiary, becoming the first Black CEO under the P&G umbrella in its 180-year history, and the company kept its mission of serving health and beauty needs overlooked by the market.

Alongside business, Walker co-founded CODE2040, a non-profit that places high-performing Black and Latino coding students in Silicon Valley internships, and has served on the boards of Foot Locker and Shake Shack. Fortune named him one of its World's Greatest Leaders, and he has been recognised on lists including TIME 100 Next and Fortune's 40 Under 40.