James H. Lowry has worked across management consulting, business ownership and education, and in 1968 he became McKinsey & Company's first African American consultant.
In a 2009 talk at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, Lowry recalled growing up African American in Chicago and learning about racial inequality. He credited teacher Madeline Straton with assigning research on accomplished Black people, an exercise he described as a source of pride and possibility.
Lowry graduated from Grinnell College in 1961 and later earned a master's degree in public international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. His early work included the Peace Corps and the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. He established James H. Lowry & Associates in 1975, and in 1978 the firm prepared a study of minority business development for the U.S. Department of Commerce.
His consulting work extended to the Boston Consulting Group, where he led work on workforce diversity, ethnic marketing and minority business development. His published professional biography also describes assignments for public agencies and corporate clients building supplier-diversity programs: work about how organizations hire and buy.
Education stayed part of it. Grinnell's 2008 honorary-degree citation records his service on its board of trustees and his development of a Kellogg education program for minority business professionals. Speaking to Kellogg students the next year, he told them to find mentors, learn how organizations work and prepare carefully before starting a business.
Lowry has also written. He co-authored *Minority Business Success: Refocusing on the American Dream* in 2011. Archway published his memoir, *Change Agent: A Life Dedicated to Creating Wealth for Minorities*, in February 2020.
