The untold story Debra Lee, BET, and the first Black company to IPO on the NYSE

“Do you think we can go any faster?” I asked, checking my watch for the third time: 5:17 p.m. and rush hour. We had exactly 13 minutes to get all the way from the commercial printer’s office in Virginia to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Capitol Hill. Bob’s voice was playing on repeat in my head like the countdown for a bomb: Get it done in five, four, three, two. . . .

“I’ll try, Ms. Lee,” assured Tony, my driver. I checked my wrist again, mentally willing every red light to turn green as we sped down Pennsylvania Avenue toward BET’s future. Sitting in my lap was the most important stack of papers I’d ever produced—BET’s Securities & Exchange registration, the first step in taking the company public on the New York Stock Exchange. We’d be the first Black-owned-and-operated company to do it—ever. And we were late.

“The office closes at 5:30.” Could he hear the worry in my voice?

“I’ll get you there.”

With my fingers, ankles, and toes crossed, I whispered a quiet prayer in the back seat before flipping through BET’s filing for the hundredth and hopefully last time.

For five years, I had watched BET grow from the little media company that could to a formidable player in the budding cable industry. It was 1991, and cable networks were now reaching millions of households, a ripe gold mine to potential advertisers. But to take our business to the next level, BET needed capital, and that meant going public, selling off a portion of the company to shareholders, and using the money raised to invest in expanding the brand. This was a major deal. We were a Black company, and Wall Street had come calling. As general counsel, the IPO filing fell squarely on my shoulders. For the past 10 months, I had lived and breathed the process, poring over every aspect of our application to make sure it was airtight. All-nighters were a given. By then I had a husband and a toddler at home, but this took precedence. I spearheaded everything regarding our registration with the SEC, which involved meticulously detailed statements about BET’s real estate holdings, business practices, management structure, and financials. It was a massive undertaking that Bob, of course, wanted (March 24, 2023). The work was grueling, but because I believed so strongly in our mission, it never seemed like a slog.

The filing was akin to a biography about BET. It was hundreds and hundreds of pages describing every aspect of the business. We had to lay out the company’s origin story, how it was structured internally, what our business model and growth looked like, what the risks of going public were, and so much more. It was a bird’s-eye view of BET’s corporate health. Compiling that complicated story for the IPO meant that at around 6 p.m. each day, after running the legal department, I would dash over the Potomac River to Virginia to spend the next five hours crafting our filing with our outside legal counsel from Skadden Arps. The printers set up a room for us in the back, and the two of us attorneys would proof the previous day’s pages, catching typos, fixing language, editing, editing, and editing. It had to be perfect. We got lost in the maze of it every night, looking up at around 10 p.m. and realizing neither one of us had eaten anything. “Chinese?”

“Is that place down the street still open?”

The answer was invariably no, and I’d head to the front desk of the printer for another handful of M&Ms, which I assume they kept on hand just for us.

Weeks and months were flying by while the IPO filled my working hours and my dreams. Fine, I was a wee bit obsessed, particularly because I knew we had to be twice as good. Reams of paperwork filled every inch of my office. I double—and then triple—checked everything. Perfect was not an option, it was a must.

Finally, Bob reached the limit of his patience. “We’re filing this thing on Wednesday, Debi. Done or not.”

So, there I was in the back of a speeding black car reading one of the most important documents I’d written in my entire professional career. I took one last look at our application just to make sure everything was in order, and that’s when I spotted it— a typo! And then another one and another one. I looked at my watch again. We had less than 10 minutes to make it to the SEC building. There was no way I could turn around, run back to my desk, correct the mistakes on my computer, head to the printer, and then head back to the SEC before it closed. But this filing had to be perfect. I had to be perfect. I fished a black pen from my purse and started crossing out words and writing corrections in the margins.

I was used to course-correcting like this. I’d been doing it since I was a baby. Because of Dad’s military career, before my tenth birthday, our family of five (Mom, Dad, my older sister Gretta, my older brother Ron, and me) would live in South Carolina, Germany, Washington, DC, and Compton, California. Change had become second nature to me. Trading one country for the next, one city for another. Adding another elementary school to my résumé, a new set of friends to replace the ones I left behind. I never got too comfortable in one place because I knew how quickly the rug could be pulled from underneath my feet. Nothing was so deeply rooted it couldn’t be snatched up and replanted. The near constant shifts happening in my life were always made easier because of my unwavering commitment to hard work. Because if there was also a constant in my life, it was success.

I was always powerfully smart. It was my anchor. Drop me in an unfamiliar environment with new faces and new benchmarks and I might be quiet, but I was always absorbing and achieving. Doing well steadied and soothed me. I had the satisfaction of knowing that my status as the forever new kid never meant I wasn’t the smartest in the room. I got good at crossing out one line and rewriting my story. In fact, that’s what led me to the back seat of that car in the first place. From the shy student to the Ivy League grad to the Big Law associate and now senior executive of what was poised to be the next great American success story; none of those steps in my climb were preordained. Every move was improvised. I mean, here I was, the can-do general counsel of the Black company of the moment, and 20 years ago I hadn’t even wanted to go to law school.

“You’re much too pretty to be a lawyer,” Muhammad Ali whispered in my ear one afternoon.

He’d shown up to meet with Bob about a potential project, and Bob being Bob had walked the Champ down our spiral staircase so that everyone got the chance to see the legend. But they stopped at my office to say hi. We shook hands, and Ali leaned in to deliver the news that my looks didn’t match my title. I didn’t know whether to be shocked or flattered—but I settled on the latter. That’s what being at BET was like back then. Never, ever dull. The work would surprise you, steady you, and make you smile. I wanted more of that out in the world and the IPO would get us there. As long as I could catch every typo while in the backseat and make it to the agency on time.

With less than five minutes to go, I shot out of the back of the car clutching BET’s SEC filing to my chest. I was practically hyperventilating. The first Black company to IPO on the NYSE was turning in an application with my pen marks. I couldn’t believe it. But Bob wanted this thing in by Wednesday, and that was that. When I ran into the building’s lobby, still anxious, my mood changed on a dime.

At the end of the light-speckled lobby inside the SEC building, there was a counter with three Black people behind it. When they saw me running through the glass doors, my heels clicking loudly against the marble floors, everyone looked up from their work. All eyes were on me. Even with just minutes left to get the filing in that day, I took a moment to take in the room. This was the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government agency I had dreamed of working for when I’d graduated from Harvard so many years before. But here I was on the other side of the counter. 

Excerpted from I AM DEBRA LEE: A Memoir by Debra Lee. Copyright © 2023 by Debra Lee. Reprinted with permission of Legacy Lit. All rights reserved. 

Debra Lee served as CEO of Black Entertainment Television Networks from 2005 to 2018. Her 30+ year tenure at BET also included roles as General Counsel and COO. She is also the founder of Leading Women Defined and the cofounder of Monarch Collective.