Paulla McCarthy is a former nurse, a single mother of three, and a trailblazer in the water industry. She is the first Black woman to own and operate a spring water bottling plant in New York State, and the founder of Youth Saving Society (YSS), a nonprofit that teaches financial literacy and entrepreneurship to young people.

McCarthy’s journey to becoming a water mogul started with a simple idea: to sell bottled water to raise funds for her nonprofit. She gave her twin sons $1,600 to buy pallets of water from BJs and sell them on the street, during the pandemic. The boys quickly expanded their business, called The New York Water Boys, and landed contracts with 21 supermarkets and bodegas.

McCarthy wanted to create her own private label water brand to support YSS, so she searched for a water source online. She found a spring water bottling plant in Poesten𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁, New York, owned by an elderly couple who wanted to retire. She drove there with her 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren to taste the water, and ended up buying the plant and the 15 acres of land that contained an aquifer.

Brown’s journey in media began by chance, when she was offered a position in sales at WUFO by the general manager, Jesse Key, who was impressed by her personality at an event where she was working for the American Red Cross. Brown took the job, despite having a stable career at the Red Cross, and said it was her faith in God that allowed her to take that leap into a career that has spanned over three decades.

Brown had a vision for WUFO, which was founded in 1962 as Buffalo’s first Black-oriented radio station. She wanted to move it from a residential street on LaSalle Avenue to the African American Heritage Corridor on Broadway in downtown Buffalo, where millions of cars pass by every day . She also wanted to add an FM channel to the WUFO brand, which she did with Power 96.5, giving the station a bigger footprint in the industry and allowing it to have syndicated shows and morning shows.