Amy Hilliard, a native Detroiter and honors graduate of both Howard University and the Harvard Business School, is the newly-named president of Fashion Fair Cosmetics, the largest black-owned cosmetics company in the world. A former senior marketing executive with leading Fortune 500 corporations and entrepreneurial firms, including Gillette, Pillsbury, L'Oreal and Burrell Communications Group, Hilliard is formerly founder and CEO of The ComfortCake Company, makers of "poundcake so good it feels like a hug!" Launched in 2001, and now run by her daughter and director of operations Angelica Jones, ComfortCake is distributed nationally through foodservice and retail channels and through their website (www.comfortcake.com). Customers have included United Airlines, 7-Eleven, Walgreen's, Jewel-Osco, Dominick's, Rush Medical Center, and the Chicago Public Schools. The ComfortCake Company is also an approved supplier to major QSR chains.

Hilliard was named a 2009 Business Leader of Color by Chicago United, was selected by the Clinton Foundation for their Entrepreneurship Mentor Program, and is a graduate of the Chicago Urban League's nextONE program. The first African American elected to the board of the National Association of the Specialty Food Trade, she currently sits on the Multi-Cultural Advisory Board of PepsiCo and was recently elected to the Board of Trustees of Howard University.

A proud mother of two young adults, Hilliard is an internationally recognized speaker and author of Tap into Your Juice: Find Your Gifts, Lose Your Fears, and Build Your Dreams, which was endorsed by Michelle Obama. A recognized social activist in the Chicago community, she established the HUGS Foundation in 2009 to further develop the entrepreneurial spirit in others through mentorship and scholarship programs. The mission of the HUGS Foundation is to inspire Humble, Unbelievable, Greatness and Success.