If you look at any list of the world’s richest doctors you’ll notice one major trend; they’re all pretty old. That makes sense, given that it takes a long time to get a medical degree and even longer to work your way up in the world of medicine. However, there are some other trends that you’ll notice too. They are almost exclusively men. This makes sense too, given that men have many advantages over women when it comes to careers. You’ll also notice that, with a few exceptions, they are mostly white. American society is structured in a way that gives many advantages to white men, and so when people of other backgrounds are able to overcome this and become extremely successful, it’s something to celebrate. On this list of the top ten richest African American doctors, the very richest among them are also entrepreneurs. This is true in almost any field; the people who become the richest are the ones who are able to apply themselves in numerous fields and market themselves effectively. For some of the people on this list, though they are very successful and famous in their fields, precise net worth figures are not available. For others, exact figures representing their wealth are publicly known. Here are the ten African American doctors, male and female, that have the highest net worths in 2017.
The Top 10 Richest African American Doctors – 2018 True Net Worth List
#10 – Dr. Alexa Canady – Exact Net Worth Unknown
First up on the list of the top ten richest African American doctors is Dr. Alexa Canady, who is retired now, but used to be a neurosurgeon, like two others later down on this list. She has won many awards over her career, in which she has torn down boundaries other African Americans faced. For example, she is the first Black neurosurgeon ever.
#9 – Dr. Charles Crutchfield III – Exact Net Worth Unknown
A good way to get a sense of how rich and successful a doctor is is the number of positive features and profiles written about them, because, in a field like medicine, reputation is very important and can dictate earnings. Dr. Charles Crutchfield III has been the recipient of many glowing profiles, often appearing on the cover of medical magazines. He is a second generation doctor who specializes in dermatology, which means he specializes in the skin, which is the body’s largest organ. His practice is based in Minnesota, and he is recognized as one of the leading authorities on skincare both in the state and across the country.
#8 – Dr. Regina Benjamin – Exact Net Worth Unknown
One telltale sign a doctor is really raking it in is when they have their own Wikipedia page, as it’s pretty unusual for anyone to be on Wikipedia unless they are fairly notable in some regard. Dr. Regina Benjamin is notable because she was the eighteenth surgeon general of the United States, having being appointed to the position by former president Barack Obama back in 2009. She has since stepped down from that position, but she has received acclaim and awards because of her humanitarian spirit, as she has spent large portions of her life in positions focused on helping others. She has said that, before she went to college, she had never even seen a black doctor before in her life, and she completed her degree at the University of Alabama. It’s truly inspiring to consider how someone who has never seen someone with a background similar to theirs can still have the courage and ambition to pursue that career path.
#7 – Dr. Keith Black – Exact Net Worth Unknown
Next up on this list of African American doctors is another doctor with a Wikipedia page! Keith Black is a neurosurgeon, who is famous both for being very effective at treating brain tumours, and for being a person who campaigns publicly for increased funding for cancer research, which makes sense because his patients benefit directly from the latest in cancer-treatment advances. He’s the chairman of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, which is one of the most famous hospitals in the United States. He’s from Alabama, and went to the University of Michigan, where he took an accelerated program that allowed him to get both a bachelor’s degree and his medical degree in only six years. He is currently sixty years old, which means that he still has some years ahead of him as one of the United States’ most famous and rich doctors. He has attracted tons of media attention over the years because of his position on the forefront of advances in neurosurgery. He has been profiled by PBS, Esquire, and Discover, and has been on the cover of Time and published a successful book.
#6 – Dr. Patricia Bath – $1.7 Million
Dr. Patricia Bath is a high-successful ophthalmologist, as well as a well-known academic and an inventor. She has been an inspirational and groundbreaking figure in medicine, particularly for African American women, as she has achieved a range of notable “firsts” in her field that will pave the way for others for years to come. For example, before her, no African American woman had held an honorary position with UCLA Medical Centre or received a patent for medicine. Dr. Bath now has four patents, which has contributed to her status as a millionaire. She was born in New York and currently lives in Washington, D.C., where she runs the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, which she founded herself.
#5 – Dr. Charles Modlin – $3 Million
It is amazing that you can make millions of dollars studying pee. Dr. Charles Modlin is a urologist who is based at Cleveland Clinic. He was awarded the 2016 Black Professional of the Year, largely because of his work in addressing minority health discrepancies, in which people in minority groups are not able to access the same level of quality health care service as the rest of the population. There are less than twenty African American transplant surgeons in the United States and Dr. Charles Modlin is one of them, putting him in elite company. In addition to his medical practice, he is a very good public speaker, and has been doing a lot to question why African Americans suffer more illnesses than other groups. He got his medical degree at Northwestern, and then did a six year residency at New York University.
#4 – Dr. Ben Carson – $29 Million
Ben Carson, at the time of writing, is easily one of the most famous African American doctors on this list, mainly because of how involved he has gotten in America’s political landscape. Before he ran for the Republican nomination in the 2016 United States Presidential Election, Ben Carson was a successful neurosurgeon. Hearing Carson speak about his political positions, you wouldn’t necessarily know that he’s incredibly intelligent when it comes to medicine, but he had a very successful run in medicine, directing paediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins for around thirty years, until he retired a few years ago and got involved in politics. He has performed some stunning surgeries over the year, including successfully separating conjoined twins who were joined at the back of the head, as well as pioneering procedures to treat brain tumours and to treat people who are suffering from surgeries. He was written more than a hundred publications about neurosurgery, and has more than sixty honorary degrees, which is incredible. In 2008, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest civilian award that anyone can be given in the United States. After retiring from medicine, he ran for president in 2016 but dropped out of the race and supported Donald Trump.
#3 – Dr. J – $30 Million
Dr. J is one of two African American doctors on this list that obviously isn’t a real doctor in any way but still deserves to be included because the nickname of “doctor” has been a large part of his status as one of the most famous and popular basketball players in the history of the NBA. When asked why he was referred to as Dr. J instead of his real name—Julius Irving—he has said that it began when he was in high school. Because he was so good at basketball, kids at his school kept trying to give him nicknames that illustrated his incredible talent, such as The Claw and Black Moses. He hated those names, though, and asked to be called The Doctor, since he and a friend referred to each other as The Doctor and The Professor respectively.
#2 – Dr Dre – $830 Million
As you can see, there’s a huge jump in the list at this point, as Dr Dre’s net worth is nearly thirty times higher than Dr. J’s, reflecting Dr Dre’s—birth name Andre Young—incredible musical ability, marketing knowhow, and good timing. A strange coincidence is that Dr Dre’s name is actual a play on the previous doctor on this list. Dre was a club DJ who started referring to himself as Dr. J, and then he changed the name to Dr Dre to reflect his first name, and that he considered himself to be a Master of Mixology. Dr. Dre has made huge money on record sales, live concerts, but mostly for his founding of Beats headphones, which have made him nearly a billionaire and one of the richest African American doctors.
#1 – Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim – $1.7 Billion
The richest man on this list of the top ten African American doctors is not a medical doctor, but he has a PhD, which still technically makes him a doctor. His PdD is in mobile communications, which is the field he made his wealth in as well. He’s a Sudanese buisnessman who has founded mobile phone companies worth billions of dollars. Like other billionaires such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, he has joined The Giving Pledge, which dictates that he give at least half of his wealth away before he dies. He is around the 700-hundredth richest person in the world, and easily the world’s richest Black doctor, though he has never practiced medicine.
As you will have noticed from reading this list of the top ten richest African American doctors, at a certain point, though doctors make huge amounts of money, they can’t really compete with top athletes, musicians, business people, or politicians when it comes to earnings. On this list, the only true doctor who has made eight figures is Ben Carson, and his money is also tied up in politics. Between the difficulty level of studying medicine, the expense of tuition and crushing weight of student loans, and the competition at the top institutions, it’s very difficult to become a doctor, and even tougher for African American doctors. The people on this list should be celebrated for overcoming these difficulties and succeeding in becoming wealthy through medicine.
First up on the list of the top ten richest African American doctors is Dr. Alexa Canady, who is retired now, but used to be a neurosurgeon, like two others later down on this list. She has won many awards over her career, in which she has torn down boundaries other African Americans faced. For example, she is the first Black neurosurgeon ever.
