Mr. Shawn Rochester is Minority Equality Opportunities Acquisition’s (“MEOA”) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, a publicly traded company focused on the growth and capitalization of minority-led businesses. As part of the FedPROPEL team, Mr. Rochester will advise the programs operations team on business and finance related topics germane to the operational stability and growth of FedPROPEL participants.
Prior to MEOA, Shawn was CEO of Good Steward LLC and PHD Enterprises, where he provided advice and counsel to Fortune 100 executives and senior managers on creating a more inclusive and equitable economic framework to expand supplier diversity initiatives and the deployment of investment capital. Mr. Rochester was also the Global Director of New Business Development at Amphenol Corporation, where he was responsible for mergers, acquisitions, and identifying new growth opportunities for the company’s $1.2 billion portfolio.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Rochester was a member of IBM’s Emerging Business Opportunities (EBO) program, which has been featured in a Harvard Business School Case study and a Stanford Business School Research Paper. As a member of the EBO program, he represented the corporate finance division helping to identify, fund, and monitor businesses generating over $10 billion in revenue. Mr. Rochester has held leadership roles in new product development, operations management, and IT project management at Amphenol and International Paper Co.
In 2018, Mr. Rochester authored the critically acclaimed book, “The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America.” The Black Tax is a data-driven, evidence-based account of the massive systemic financial burden Black Americans have endured since the early 1600s. Shawn earned his Master of Business Administration from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rochester. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated.