In addition to the players, coaches and team, we should recognize and applaud Dr. Valerie Daniels-Carter, minority owner of the #MilwaukeeBucks. Daniels-Carter, the president and CEO of Milwaukee-based V&J Holdings, may be the most successful female franchisee in the country and just happens to be the only single black woman, alongside mostly men, to own an interest of an NBA franchise. She is also on of the board of directors for the Green Bay Packers football team.
After giving up her basketball career in 1987, Daniels-Carter went into banking and made extreme sacrifices to save the $1 MiL needed to buy her first Burger King franchise back in 1982. By 1998, she counted 32 Burger Kings and 67 Pizza Huts among V & J’s portfolio which led to her investment in Partners for Community Impact, a group of diverse community investors that purchased a minority stake in the Bucks in 2014. V&J is now the largest female-owned franchise organization in the U.S. and the largest minority-owned Pizza Hut franchisee in the U.S.
It was Daniels-Carter’s ambition, perseverance, commitment and investment in her community that led to the creation and growth of the Institute for the Preservation of African American Music and Arts Milwaukee Bucks (which celebrates Milwaukee’s Black artists and creatives), the Mother Kathryn Daniels Center (a community center and church campus the provides health services and literacy training), improvement of Milwaukee Public Schools (her donations helped schools shift to online learning amid the coronavirus pandemic) and creation of the Deer District, Milwaukee’s premier location for sports and entertainment.
In her own words, Daniels-Carter said “I’ve made a conscious decision to stay in Milwaukee and make a declaration that African Americans can be successful here,”…“If somebody doesn’t stay in Milwaukee to change it, how will it change? It starts with someone staying home, so that’s what I’ve done.”
