In 1987, Tyrone Burroughs founded the global consumer products management firm First Choice Sales & Marketing Company with a vision to create an innovative sales and marketing approach for the personal care industry. As President & CEO, he continues to provide strategic solutions delivering growth to some of the world’s largest consumer packaged goods manufacturers, retailers, and distributors.
As a driving force behind the $1.7 trillion of buying power multi-cultural personal care category, First Choice Sales & Marketing has received numerous industry awards and recognitions for developing unique programs that connect their clients to a target market. Through Burroughs’ leadership, First Choice creates profitable and growth-oriented sales, marketing, and proprietary merchandising solutions. Headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, the company is home to over 100 employees and professional contributors.
Burroughs also serves as chairman of First Choice Global Inc. (parent to First Choice Sales & Marketing Group) and other holdings that include First Choice Opportunity Fund, South City LP.; Beau Ventures, LLC; MG Capital Holdings Inc.; 115 Union Avenue, LLC.; The Burroughs Foundation Inc.; Rizzo’s Diner; The Pocket Bistro; and R.S. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home (the funeral home that prepared the remains for public viewing of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr).
Often lauded for his ability to create business opportunities, Burroughs has been described as a catalyst for breakthrough results and accelerating progress while fostering positive business relationships. In 2019, he launched Burroughs Restaurant Group Inc., which now owns the US mid-south franchise rights of Guthrie’s Chicken Restaurants.
As a business advisor, Burroughs serves as a member of the Benedict College Board of Trustees, Board of Directors at Guaranty Bank and Trust Company, Chairman of
The Burroughs Foundation Inc., Chairman of the Trustee Board for the historic Metropolitan Baptist Church, Memphis NAACP Branch Board of Directors, and Global Beauty Alliance Board. He also serves as a board member for the St. Jude Memphis African American Engagement Council, WKNO Board of Trustees, Faith-Based & Community Initiative Foundation, Tennessee Lottery Commission, Greater Memphis Chamber – Chairman’s Circle, Memphis Theological Seminary, and Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank – Memphis Branch. Also notably, he was a 2021 Inductee in The Society of Entrepreneurs.
Past board memberships include Ronald McDonald Charity House, Regional One Health Hospital Board of Directors, Memphis, and the Shelby County Convention Center Board.
Burroughs holds an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Benedict College in Columbia, SC. He also earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Political Science and added graduate studies from the University of South Carolina.
In 2017 in recognition of Mr. Burroughs’s philanthropic achievements in the education of America’s youth, Benedict College School of Business & Economics wasrenamed to the Tyrone Adam Burroughs School of Business and Entrepreneurship.
Based in Memphis, Tennessee, First Choice has helped the health and beauty products industry prosper since 1987. Our primary goal as an organization is to leverage the First Choice brand team’s insight to enhance the awareness of the brands we manage. This is accomplished through extraordinary product placement and sales across a broad range of distribution channels. First Choice has unmatched sales, category management, planogram planning, marketing, public relations, promotion, merchandising, and distribution. Using these valuable skills, we can help products (including those targeted to multi-cultural consumers) succeed in niche markets. Extensive relationships and an emphasis on maintaining our retail partners’ good name contribute to our proven ability to grow and support the growing portfolio of brands we consider part of the First Choice family.
1987
Entrepreneurship is the backbone of our country’s economy. Those who have the courage and fortitude to take risk, step out on faith, engage in new and different ventures while providing opportunities not only for themselves but people from all walks of life. Entrepreneurship means having an idea, bringing it to life, nurturing it, and watching it evolve into economic opportunities for all people without regard to ethnicity or gender. It requires having a vision and the willingness to take a chance and go the extra mile to see that vision come to fruition. Those who possess the entrepreneurial spirit become passionate for effective change and a need to make a mark in the areas where one can make a difference. It means providing examples for others who dream of pursuing an idea and needing the incentives to make it happen. Also, it could create wealth, change people’s lives and how they work. Finally, entrepreneurship can affect the business world by making it more diverse and opening opportunities to those who can but haven’t had a pathway to pursue their passion. Since I was very young, I have always known that I wanted to own my own business to change my life and impact the lives of others and the greater society for the better.
“Great leaders are driven to shift and change the world for humankind”
