Eugene Mitchell developed New York Life's $50 Billion Community Empowerment Plan while working as a corporate vice president and African American market manager. Launched in 2011, the campaign aimed to expand life insurance protection among Black families. Its target was expressed as 200,000 families holding an average of $250,000 in coverage. Mitchell later founded E. Mitchell Enterprises and wrote Closing the Racial Wealth Gap: 7 Untold Rules for Black Prosperity and Legacy, published in 2019.
After earning an associate degree, Mitchell worked at a Florida correctional facility. He has said that seeing its largely Black and Brown population prompted him to think about economic opportunity. He earned a finance degree at Florida International University and an MBA at New York University. A technology internship took him to California before he returned to New York and pursued the insurer's leadership development program.
His work involved the company's advertising and underwriting, along with the agents selling its policies. He helped agents hold workshops in Black churches and reach labor unions and community organizations. He also supported recruitment at historically Black colleges and universities.
The $50 billion campaign focused on the amount of insurance protection in force. In July 2017, Mitchell described the initiative's approach in an interview with Black Enterprise, which reported that the program expected to reach its target that month, and he reported $640 million in death benefits paid to African American families since the initiative began in 2011. A 2024 InsuranceNewsNet profile reported that Mitchell and his team had reached the coverage target in mid-2017.
Mitchell left New York Life to build a consulting business and write. E. Mitchell Enterprises published his book in June 2019. In his 2024 interview, he emphasized recruiting and retaining more Black agents to reach more families.
