She became a leader at a very young age. At the age of 23, Linda Johnson Rice was made the vice president and fashion coordinator of the Johnson Publishing Company (JPC). In 1987, she became the company’s president and chief operating officer, making her one of the youngest publishing executives in the United States.

That also got her to be a part of first lady Hillary Clinton’s delegation to Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Rice visited Mandela in his home a year later when JPC decided to launch Ebony South Africa. Those were the good old days in the books of Rice, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Interestingly, Rice’s favorite book is titled “Succeeding Against the Odds”. Adopted at three months old by John and Eunice Johnson, she never had to compete with any sibling for a position in her father John Johnson’s company, but she had to convince the publishing industry that she was capable and credible. She had a legacy to maintain for an entity established by her father in 1942 to represent the voice of the black community. The Johnson Publishing Company, which became the largest Black-owned publishing company in the United States, authored the Ebony and Jet magazines to transform the narrative of Black America. In 1970, JPC witnessed its biggest readership ever, and in order to prove that she was capable of leading the company, Rice enrolled at Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School, where she earned an M.B.A. in management in 1987.

While many magazines were folding up, Rice ensured that Ebony and Jet magazines were running smoothly. Her trying moment was during the 2008 global financial crisis when she had to steer the affairs of the company amid high budget cuts by advertisers. The decision was taken to reinvest in the business by bringing new talent. By 2014, she had started to expand Ebony and Jet on the digital side to attract and nurture a younger audience. At the time, there were more than 1 million unique visitors to Ebony.com and Jetmag.com per month and the publications could be accessed on Kindle, Nook, and iPad.

She also implemented innovative ways of archiving 2,500 photos from the publisher’s archives. The audience was allowed to buy and frame a piece of history as the outstanding images of Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, and other notable figures such as James Brown and Lena Horne were all up for sale. Looking back, it is one of Rice’s proudest achievements in ensuring the magazines stayed afloat during hard times.

But as much as it was difficult to admit, the toughest decision she ever had to make was to sell Ebony and Jet magazines in 2016. Given their rich history and attachment to the black community, it was a tough choice to keep them while they drained the company’s coffers and other related family businesses such as Fashion Fair Cosmetics. It was a decision that gave her sleepless nights but as much as she hoped for the fortunes of the magazines to improve, she knew they were better off being managed by other investors. Looking back, she is proud the magazines are still black-owned and represent the ideals her father had always envisioned.

Taking the right and tough decisions over the last 30 years of dedicated service has enabled her to serve on more than 10 corporate boards. Her style of leadership has been acknowledged on the Chicago Sun–Times List of Chicago’s 100 Most Powerful Women and the Top 10 Women in Media, as well as Crain’s list of the 20 Most Powerful Women in Chicago, according to Washington Speakers Bureau. To many, she symbolizes the strong and resilient leader who earned her place as “the first African-American CEO among the top five of the Black Enterprise 100s largest black-owned companies.”