Cynthia “Cynt” Marshall was the first …

Cynthia “Cynt” Marshall was the first black cheerleader at the University of California, Berkeley in the late 1970s. She spent nearly four decades climbing the corporate ladder at AT&T. And today she is the first black, female CEO in the NBA, having taken the helm at the Dallas Mavericks in 2018 to clean up the league’s toxic work culture. But Marshall, 60, says she didn’t truly come into her own until more than 20 years into her career. “I just did my job and did what [my bosses] told me to do,” Marshall tells CNBC Make It.