World Wide Technology Chairman Dave Steward on founding the largest Black-owned company in America

By Eben Shapiro

Dave Steward is not your typical billionaire tech-company founder. His company is based in St. Louis, not San Jose. He brings his deep faith into the workplace. Earlier this year, he wrote Leadership by the Good Book, with a foreword by Bishop T.D. Jakes, about applying biblical principles to a business setting. He’s a salesman, not a technologist—he was once FedEx’s salesperson of the year.

And Steward, 69, is the rare Black chairman in an industry that has struggled with diversity, particularly at senior levels. His privately owned US$12 billion company, World Wide Technology (WWT), is thriving in the current COVID-19 environment, helping a broad range of corporations select and install complex computer systems and other digital infrastructure. With more than 5,600 employees and offices around the globe, the company is the largest Black-owned business in America. Steward recently joined TIME for a video conversation on the impact of COVID on his business, why he has chosen to keep WWT private and how his father inspired his entrepreneurial zeal.

Interviewer (I): It’s become a truism that the pandemic has accelerated the shift to digitalization by 5 years. What areas are you seeing have stepped up demand?

Dave Steward (DS): Cyberattacks have gone up over 100 percent, so our security practice has skyrocketed. From federal, state and local, to utilities, to health care, every sector has been just hammered with cyberattacks.

I: So the bad guys are pivoting to digital too?

DS: It’s just off the charts.

I: So are you adding head count to your cybersecurity team?

DS: We’re adding employees across the full spectrum of our business, from networks to architecture to engineering. You name it, we’re adding openings. Right now, I think we have 700 openings. We can’t find the right people fast enough.

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