Football player Jerry Rice was born on October 13, 1962 in Starkville, Mississippi to Eddie and Joe Rice. He graduated from B.L. Moor High School in Oktoc, Mississippi in 1980 and enrolled in Mississippi Valley State University in Itta Bena, Mississippi in 1981.

Under head football coach Archie Cooley at Mississippi Valley State University, Rice played as a wide receiver and was the all-time NCAA leader in receiving touchdowns. He was then drafted by the San Francisco 49ers as the sixteenth pick overall in 1985 under head coach Bill Walsh. Rice played with the San Francisco 49ers in their wins at Super Bowl XXIII in 1988, where he was voted MVP, Super Bowl XXIV in 1989, and Super Bowl XXIX in 1994. Following the 2000 football season, Rice signed with the Oakland Raiders under head coach Jon Gruden. He then briefly played for the Seattle Seahawks in 2004 and the Denver Broncos in 2005 before retiring as a San Francisco 49er later that year. Over his twenty-season career, Rice had fourteen 1,000-yard seasons, 22,895 receiving yards, 1,549 receptions, 208 touchdowns, and played a total of 303 games. In 2019, he co-founded G.O.A.T. Fuel, Inc., an energy drink company where he serves as executive chair.

Rice is widely regarded as the greatest wide receiver in NFL history and one of the greatest football players of all time. He is the career leader in most major statistical categories for wide receivers, including receptions, receiving touchdowns, receiving yards, scrimmage yards, and total touchdowns, holding the postseason records for these statistics, and held the single season records for yards and touchdowns. He scored more points than any other non-kicker in NFL history with 1,256 points. Rice was selected to the Pro Bowl 13 times and named first-team All-Pro ten times, tied for the most by any player. He also was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2006, Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2007, and Black College Football Hall of Fame and Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2010. The NFL honored him as a member of both the NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team and NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team. In 1999, The Sporting News listed Rice second behind football legend Jim Brown on its list of "Football's 100 Greatest Players." In 2010, he was chosen by NFL Network's NFL Films production The Top 100: NFL's Greatest Players as the greatest player in NFL history.

Rice has co-authored two books about his life: Rice, with Michael Silver, published in 1996, and Go Long: My Journey Beyond the Game and the Fame, with Brian Curtis, published in 2007. In 2019, he co-authored the book America's Game: The NFL at 100 with Randy O. Williams.

Rice and his wife, Latisha Rice, live in San Francisco. They have four children, Jaqui Rice, Jerry Rice Jr., Jada Rice, and Brenden Rice.

Jerry Rice was interviewed by The History Makers on July 1, 2022.

Executive consultant Caretha Coleman was born on February 21, 1950 in Yokohama, Japan to Chizuko Murata Watkins and Clifford Watkins. After graduating from St. Bernard’s High School in Fitchburg, Massachusetts in 1968, Coleman briefly attended Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner, Massachusetts.

From 1969 to 1973, Coleman worked as a flight attendant for Trans World Airlines. She then joined the human resources department at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California. Coleman remained with Hewlett-Packard for six years as its workforce grew from 21,000 to 52,000 employees. In 1979, Coleman was hired as a staffing manager at Spectra-Physics in Mountain View, California. In 1982, she was recruited to work as director of human resources at Software Publishing Corporation, also in Mountain View, where she was a vice president for nine years and where she helped guide one of the earliest successful desktop computer software companies.

Following a brief appointment at Verifone in 1991, Coleman worked as a consultant for Interval Research in Palo Alto, eventually becoming their chief administration officer, and with Mayfield, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park. In 1997, she became a founding member of The Angels Forum, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. In 1998, Coleman founded Coleman Consulting in Los Altos, which focuses on executive and CEO coaching, especially for minority entrepreneurs. In 2020, Coleman was elected a director of The RealReal, an online marketplace for resale luxury goods.

Coleman has served on numerous boards and committees. She chaired Dignity Health, the largest not-for-profit hospital provider in California, for three years. In 2015, she was appointed chair of The Leverage Network, which aims to increase the number of African Americans on healthcare boards and to eliminate health disparities in communities of color. Coleman has also served the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Peninsula Community Foundation, YMCA, Facing History and Ourselves, Accion Opportunity Fund, Black Economic Alliance, Ravenswood Health Clinic, LifeMap Communications, and Viridis Learning. She is an advisor to the Santa Clara University Black Corporate Board Readiness program, Culture Shift, Illuminate Ventures, and Launch with Goldman Sachs.

Coleman is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including being named one of the Bay Area’s Most Influential Women by the San Francisco Business Times, an Outstanding Director by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, a Visionary Leader by the SF Chronicle, and an American Leadership Forum Fellow. She received the YMCA’s Red Triangle award and the Black Enterprise Trailblazer award in 2016 and was nominated as a Visionary Leader in the Bay Area for her work towards creating a more diverse community inside and outside the workplace. In 2017, Coleman and her husband, Kenneth L. Coleman, were honored by the City of Palo Alto for their philanthropic contributions to the Silicon Valley community, including their fundraising efforts to build a YMCA in East Palo Alto.

Coleman and her husband, Kenneth L. Coleman, live in Los Altos Hills, California. Together they have six children and thirteen grandchildren.

Caretha Coleman was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on June 29, 2022.

Law professor William B. Gould IV was born on July 16, 1936 in Boston, Massachusetts to Leah F. Gould and William B. Gould III. He received his A.B. degree in 1958 from the University of Rhode Island and his L.L.B. degree in 1961 from Cornell Law School. He also studied at the London School of Economics.

After graduating from law school, Gould was hired as assistant general counsel for the United Auto Workers in Detroit in 1961. He then served as an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, D.C. from 1963 to 1965 before going on to work as an associate at Battle, Fowler, Stokes & Kheel in New York City until 1968. He served as a consultant to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1966 and was selected as a member of the first Fact-Finding Board established under the New York Taylor Law in 1967. In 1968, Gould was hired as a professor of law at Wayne State Law School in Detroit. He then was hired as a professor of law at Stanford Law School in 1972, where he was named the Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law in 1984. In Gould’s litigation of Stamps v. Detroit Edison (1973), his clients received the largest per capita employment discrimination judgment at the time. Later, Gould was selected as a salary arbitrator for the 1992-1993 salary disputes between the Major League Baseball (MLB) Players Association and the MLB Player Relations Committee. He was appointed a member of the On the Future of Worker/Management Relations Commission of the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Department of Commerce in 1993 and a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States in 1994. From 1994 to 1998, Gould served as chair of the NLRB, where he helped to negotiate the end of the 1994-95 MLB strike. Gould retired from Stanford in 2002. In 2011, he was appointed a consultant and special advisor to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on project labor agreements. From 2014 to 2017, Gould served as chair of the California Agricultural Relations Board. Gould has arbitrated and mediated more than three hundred labor disputes.

Gould is the author of over eleven books, including A Primer on American Labor Law (1982); Labored Relations: Law, Politics and the NLRB–A Memoir (2000); and Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor (2002).

Gould was appointed secretary of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the American Bar Association in 1980. Gould is a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators.

Gould has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and five honorary doctorates.

Gould and his wife, Hilda, live in Palo Alto, California. They have three sons, William B. Gould V, Timothy Gould, and Edward Gould.

William B. Gould IV was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on June 28, 2022.