Catherine Hughes has been Chairperson of the Board of Directors and Secretary of Radio One since 1980 and was Chief Executive Officer of Radio One from 1980 to 1997.

Her desire to be in the radio industry started when she was only eight years old and her mother purchased a transmitter radio for her.  She would lock herself in the bathroom pretending her toothbrush was a microphone.

Ms. Hughes gets her entrepreneurship inspiration from her family. They have always run family operated businesses dating back to her grandfather who founded  Honeywood Country Life School in Mississippi.  The school is one hundred years old, still educating around three hundred disadvantage black children with a college placement rate of ninety-nine percent.  This helped with her business style and her commitment to help her fellow man.  Growing up she learned from watching her grandparents and parents assisting those less fortunate.