What Is Mellody Hobson's Net Worth?
Mellody Hobson is an American businesswoman who has a net worth of $100 million. Mellody Hobson became nationally-known in 2013 when she married billionaire filmmaker George Lucas. Mellody is the president and co-CEO of the Chicago-based company Ariel Investments, and she was previously the chairwoman of DreamWorks Animation. Hobson became the vice-chair of the Starbucks Corporation board of directors in 2018, and she was promoted to non-executive chair in 2021, making her the first Black woman to chair an S&P 500 (Standard and Poor's 500) company.
In 2017, she was named chair of The Economic Club of Chicago, becoming the first African-American woman to hold the position. Hobson has been a Financial Contributor on "Good Morning America" and "CBS This Morning," and she hosted and executive produced the 2009 ABC special "Un-Broke: What You Need to Know About Money." Mellody has been featured on "Ebony" magazine's "20 Leaders of the Future" list (1992), "Esquire" magazine's "America's Best and Brightest" list (2002), the "Wall Street Journal's" list of "50 Women to Watch" (2004), and "Time" magazine's list of "The World's 100 Most Influential People" (2015).
In June 2022, she was part of a team of investors, led by Walmart heir Rob Walton, to make a successful $4.65 billion bid to acquire the NFL's Denver Broncos. She is the first black female owner of an NFL team.
Early Life
Mellody Hobson was born on April 3, 1969, in Chicago, Illinois. Mellody has five older siblings, and she attended St. Ignatius College Prep. After graduating in 1987, Hobson enrolled at Princeton University, where she joined the Cottage Club, one of several eating clubs on campus. She graduated from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1991, and in 2019, the school presented her with the Woodrow Wilson Award during Alumni Day. In 2020, Mellody and the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation donated funds to Princeton to "establish a new residential college at Princeton University." The residential college will be named Hobson College and will be built on the site of what was formerly known as Wilson College; Princeton's Board of Trustees decided to remove Woodrow Wilson's name from campus buildings in June 2020 due to his "racist views and policies." Mellody said of her time at Princeton, "No one from my family had graduated from college when I arrived at Princeton from Chicago, and yet even as I looked up at buildings named after the likes of Rockefeller and Forbes, I felt at home. My hope is that my name will remind future generations of students — especially those who are Black and brown and the 'firsts' in their families — that they too belong. Renaming Wilson College is my very personal way of letting them know that our past does not have to be our future."
Career
After graduating from Princeton, Hobson joined Ariel Investments as an intern. She eventually became the company's Senior Vice President as well as the Director of Marketing, and in 2000, she became President. By January 2021, the company was managing $15 billion in assets, and it is one of the U.S.A.'s largest African American-owned mutual fund and money management companies. Mellody also chairs the Ariel Investment Trust board of trustees, and she has been a member of the boards for numerous organizations, such as the Sundance Institute, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. She was formerly on the board of directors of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc., and before becoming chair of the Starbucks Corporation's board, she was the head of the company's finance committee. Mellody hosted the 2009 ABC special "Unbroke: What You Need to Know About Money," which featured Samuel L. Jackson, Seth Green, Rosario Dawson, Will Smith, the Jonas Brothers, and other celebrities, and she guest-hosted the "CBS Sunday Morning" 2017 "Money Issue" episode. Actress Vanessa L. Williams based her character on the CBS drama "The Good Wife," businesswoman Courtney Paige, on Hobson and has said that she watched Mellody's TED Talks to prepare for the role. Hobson became the chairwoman of DreamWorks Animation in 2012, and she negotiated NBCUniversal's $3.8 billion acquisition of the studio in 2016 before stepping down.
(Stephen Brashear/Getty Images
Personal Life
In 2006, Mellody began a relationship with George Lucas after meeting at a business conference, and they became engaged in early 2013. They married at Skywalker Ranch on June 22, 2013, and they welcomed daughter Everest via a surrogate on August 9th of that year. Mellody is stepmother to Amanda, Jett, and Katie Lucas. George adopted Amanda with his first wife, Academy Award-winning editor Marcia Lou Griffin, and he adopted Katie and Jett on his own after their 1983 divorce. In August 2017, Hobson was honored by the City of Birmingham on the "Jack Good Show" for her work with the charity Birmingham's Bright Leaders of Tomorrow.
Awards and Honors
In 2018, the Governor of Illinois awarded Mellody the Order of Lincoln, which is Illinois' highest honor, and Hobson was inducted into The Lincoln Academy of Illinois as a Laureate. In 2019, she earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Morning Program for "CBS This Morning." Mellody has received honorary doctorates from the University of Southern California, Howard University, St. Mary's College, and Johns Hopkins University.
Real Estate
Mellody Hobson and George Lucas own a vast real estate portfolio. Their properties include a 15,159 square foot home in San Anselmo, California, a $34 million home in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles, a $19 million penthouse in Chicago, and Skywalker Ranch, which is located on a 2,500-acre lot in Marin County, California.
In late 2019, the couple paid $28 million for a home in Carpinteria, California, that is next door to a home they purchased in 2010 for $19.5 million.
