Roy Donahue “Don” Peebles is a real-estate entrepreneur, author and political activist.
He was born on March 2, 1960 to a teen-aged, working class mother as her only son. Mr. Peebles was a smart and savvy teen who worked and networked his way to becoming one of the country's wealthiest African Americans. In a March 2005 interview with Inc. Magazine, Mr. Peebles said this of his childhood …
My mother was a secretary, but she went to night school to get her brokerage license and worked as a sales agent. Later, she opened her own real estate brokerage firm. During the summer of my senior year of high school, I worked with her appraising homes, learning the business. I also worked on Capitol Hill as a page and as an intern for two congressmen, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan and Rep. Ron Dellums of California. I had a pretty grueling schedule, but I got to see how politics and business interacted.
After high school, Mr. Peebles left home to attend Rutgers University but was so disappointed with the experience that he dropped out after the first year and returned to real-estate.
His commitment to the real estate industry has certainly paid off and Mr. Peebles now serves as the chairman and chief executive officer of the Peebles Corporation, the largest African-American real-estate development and ownership company in the United States. His company has a multi-billion dollar development portfolio of luxury hotels, high-rise residential and commercial properties in Washington, D.C., Las Vegas and Miami Beach. In May 2009, Forbes listed Mr. Peebles in the top ten of the wealthiest African Americans. In 2010, Fortune magazine estimated his wealth at $350 million.
A top-selling author, Mr. Peebles first book, The Peebles Principles, shares the lessons he learned on his journey to building his successful real estate company and amassing his personal fortune.
His second book, The Peebles Path to Real Estate Wealth, outlines his advice regarding the fundamental tools for real estate investing and tells the reader how to make money in any market.
To learn more about Mr. Peebles, check out his Inc. Magazine interview at http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050301/howididit.html and his company's website at http://peeblescorp.com/peebles.html.
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