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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, Illinois with manufacturing facilities located in Macedon, New York, the company employs more than 200 people with sales of $130 million. Baldwin Richardson Foods is a major producer of products and ingredients for McDonald’s Corporation, Kellogg, General Mand Frito-Lay Quaker Oats. The company also has retail brandsand foodservice products that it distributes nationally. 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 sharply turned around the company’s performance in 1991, it was the seventh best performing stock on the American Stock Exchange and earned the American Management Association’s Turn Around award. A business entrepreneur, in 1992 he went on to purchase Baldwin Ice Cream Co., a small ice cream company with a fine history, established in Chicago in 1921. Johnson expanded the distribution and sales of the company, and in 1997, completed the acquisition of Richardson Foods from the Quaker Oats Company. The company produced Nance’s mustard and condiments, Mrs. Richardson’s famous dessert toppings, and liquid products for McDonald’s. Johnson received his bachelor of arts and science degrees in Finance and Management from Babson College and his master of business administration degree from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business. He serves as a member of the board of directors for Lincoln National Corporation and is chairman of its Development Committee. He also is a member of the board of directors for the Urban League of Rochester, and the board of trustees for Babson College and Rochester Institute of Technology. | 