Byron Lewis

Chairman & CEO, UniWorld Group

Byron Lewis is a 35-year veteran in African American marketing and communications. Over the years he has developed a variety of targeted publishing, promotion, broadcast production and entertainment projects. He founded UniWorld Group, Inc. in 1969 after a decade of unsuccessful attempts to find employment within historically restricted mainstream advertising agencies and media companies.

Mr. Lewis began his career prior to affirmative action, working with African American newspapers in Harlem, New York. From his grassroots foundation he has built UniWorld into the nation's largest independently owned ethnic advertising agency. Most recently, his agency recorded several major breakthroughs in minority advertising. During 1994, UniWorld developed Burger King's national interim creative campaign, which generated the greatest six-month sales increase in BK's history. In 1995, UniWorld won Mars Inc.'s Three Musketeers candy brand general market account. These successes mark the largest mainstream advertising assignments ever awarded to an ethnic agency.

In the early 1970's, Mr. Lewis supervised advertising and media strategies for former Mayor Kenneth Gibson's political campaign in Newark, the first Black Political Summit in Gary, Indiana, Reverend Jesse Jackson's first presidential campaign in 1984, and the first on-site Black radio and press coverage of the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns in 1976. For the past 15 years, Mr. Lewis has been the Executive Producer for America's Black Forum, the nation's only Black news program on commercial television. Hosted by Julian Bond, ABF is syndicated in 70 major markets and reaches over 85% of U.S. households.

Mr. Lewis is also the Founder and Executive Producer of the Acapulco Black Film Festival, the Co-Founder of The Urbanite, a national Black literary magazine, Associate Advertising and Promotion Manager for Amalgamated Publishing, and Vice President and Advertising Director for Tuesday Magazine. In addition, he is a board member of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Advertising Federation, Phoenix House Foundation, the New York City Sports Commission and the Metro Board of Governors for the U.S. Olympic Committee.