Louis Carr

Louis Carr built his media career by working with advertisers and the audiences they hoped to reach. For more than two decades, he served as BET's president of media sales before becoming the network's president in December 2025.

Carr was born in Chicago in 1956 and graduated from Lane Technical High School in 1974. A track athlete, he attended Drake University on an athletic scholarship and earned a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism in 1978. The HistoryMakers' finding aid records early insurance work, then advertising sales at Johnson Publishing Company and a stint at Black Enterprise, before his recruitment to BET in 1986.

At BET, his sales work meant explaining the commercial importance of Black audiences. The American Advertising Federation's biography describes relationships with companies including Procter & Gamble, McDonald's and General Motors, and his use of audience research in conversations with advertisers across television, digital and social platforms.

Carr created the Louis Carr Internship Foundation in 2003. Its purpose includes giving communications experience to students who could not afford unpaid summer work: paid placements, structured assignments and individual mentoring through participating companies, in advertising, public relations and media sales among other fields.

He has written too. His books include *Dirty Little Secrets* and *Little Black Book: Daily Motivations for Business and Personal Growth*, and his WayMaker Journal and Blueprint men's events created settings for talking about careers and personal development. In 2023, the American Advertising Federation inducted him into its Advertising Hall of Fame.

In an August 2026 AfroTech interview, Carr described working with younger creators as BET adapted to new media formats, pointing to the network's work with comedian Druski as an example of combining a creator's ideas with the organization's business processes.