Don Coleman

A former NFL linebacker and lifelong entrepreneur, Donald A. Coleman is a visionary and pioneer in the advertising industry. An advocate of ethnic and multicultural marketing, Coleman’s firm, GlobalHue, has been a conduit for companies wishing to speak to cultural markets using nontraditional messages that appeal to their values and beliefs.

After graduating from the University of Michigan and serving a four-year stint in the NFL, Coleman began his advertising and communications career at Campbell-Ewald Advertising in Warren, Michigan. After Campbell-Ewald, he worked for a Chicago firm that targeted the African-American consumer market. In 1988, Coleman fulfilled his dream and started his own agency, Don Coleman Advertising, with which, in 2002, he acquired the Hispanic agency Montemayor y Asociados and the Asian agency Innovasia Communications to form GlobalHue.

With offices in Detroit (Southfield) and New York City, GlobalHue is the nation’s largest minority-owned, full-service marketing communications agency with total market and cultural expertise. The agency handles total market for the Jeep brand and OneMain Financial, and for decades has been acknowledged for its multicultural expertise by its blue-chip clients, including Chrysler Group LLC, Verizon Wireless, Walmart and the U.S. Navy. In 2009, GlobalHue was recognized as the “Multicultural Advertising Agency of the Decade” by Adweek. Named one of the “12 Top Innovators in Marketing and Advertising” by Black Enterprise, and profiled in the New York Times as The Boss, a feature reserved for select leaders in the business world, Coleman is an innovator in the advertising industry and well known for his entrepreneurial spirit. His latest enterprise, GHV of New York, is an independent venture company that seeks opportunities in media, marketing and advertising to create alternative business for GlobalHue clients as well as for Fortune 500 companies.

Coleman is also a member of the board of several organizations, most recently being appointed to the Spelman College Board of Trustees. He is also a philanthropist, contributing more than $5 million over the last five years to various organizations. Further, to promote entrepreneurship as a career choice amongst ethnic college students, Coleman launched The Coleman Entrepreneurial Scholarship (CES) in 2009. The mission of the scholarship is to be a leading scholarship fund that assists future generations and entrepreneurs in fulfilling their dreams. Since its inception, the Coleman Entrepreneurial Scholarship has awarded over $150,000 to its recipients.