Emmit McHenry

Emmit McHenry (born July 12, 1943, Forrest City, Arkansas), is a black entrepreneur and company builder. He grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, attending Stewart Elementary School, Carver Middle School and Booker T. Washington High School. He received his B.S. in communications from the University of Denver in 1966. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, where he attained the rank of lieutenant. McHenry earned his M.S. degree in communications from Northwestern University in 1979. He started as an IBM Systems Engineer and later served as Assistant Dean and Instructor at Northwestern University. With Gary Desler, Ty Grigsby, and Ed Peters he founded his first full-time entrepreneurial venture: Network Solutions. The company commercialized the TCP/IP protocol for packet switched computer network interoperability and went on to become the manager of the domain name system (DNS) registry. McHenry has been a part of founding a number companies. His honors include an Honorary Doctorate from Shaw University, the Marine Corps Sunset Parade Guest of Honor for his contributions to the Nations C4 Capacity, and the Chairman’s Award from the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Foundation. He is currently CEO, in partnership with his son Kurt, of Archura, a telecommunications systems integrator, and chairman and CEO of Defense Manufacturing.