Eric G. Johnson is President and Chief Executive Officer of Baldwin Richardson Foods Company, one of the largest African- American-owned businesses in the food industry. Headquartered in Frankfort, Ill., with manufacturing facilities located in Macedon, N.Y., the company employs more than 250 people with sales of $178 million. In 1989, Johnson, following in his father’s footsteps, became Chief Executive Officer of Johnson Products Company, the nation’s first African-American owned publicly-traded company. Having turned around the company’s performance in 1991, Johnson earned the American Management Association’s “Turn Around” Award.

An entrepreneur to the core, Johnson purchased Baldwin Ice Cream Co in 1992 and expanded the distribution and sales of the company, and in 1997, completed the acquisition of Richardson Foods from the Quaker Oats Company.