Cornell Thomas lost his police officer father in New Jersey to cancer when he was four, and he grew up watching his dental assistant mother struggle to support her family. “Once, in sixth grade, I asked if we could order pizza,” he says. “Mom gave me a look that said, No. Don’t ask again.“
To help out, Cornell turned to entrepreneurship. “My mother had these packs of WeightWatchers cookies that tasted like death,” he says. Cornell put on his baseball uniform and sold the cookies to his neighbors for 50 cents a pack. “I made $50. It was like a million bucks.”