Most Powerful Moms: African American Leaders

From the White House to Hollywood and everywhere in between, African American working mothers are making their mark on this generation. Women like Michelle Obama and Halle Berry are role models for their children while being innovators and thought leaders. Meet some of the best and brightest. Every Working Mother Most Powerful Mom still has at least one child at home under the age of 18 - some are new moms and some have been at it a long time with only their youngest still in the nest. Being moms has shaped who they are as much as they have shaped the world around them.

Edited by Helen Jonsen

Halle Berry

Movie Actress, 43
Kids: Nahla, 2

Halle Berry is one of the most accomplished actresses in Hollywood. Her performance as the wife of a death row prisoner in the 2001 film Monster’s Ball earned Berry an Academy Award—the first for an African-American lead actress. The Cleveland native began acting in the late 1980s, but didn’t receive her big-screen break until in 1991, when she portrayed a drug addict in Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever.” Over the years, Berry has appeared in a wide range of movies, including romantic comedies, dramas, thrillers, biopics and comic-book-inspired films. The former model and 1986 Miss USA first runner-up is also a Revlon spokesperson who in addition to appearing in television commercials and print ads serves as an ambassador for the annual Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) Revlon Run/Walk. Berry has also teamed up with EIF and Novo Nordisk to launch the Diabetes Aware campaign to heighten attention around the disease she was diagnosed with in 1989. She has been featured on the Forbes Celebrity 100. As a working mother, Berry is particular about the roles she chooses. She told Essence magazine, “I don’t want my daughter to look back at my work and think, ‘Mom sold out.’ I want to leave a legacy that she can be proud of.”

- by Angela Johnson Meadows

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