Brother Marlowe Stoudamire: Detroit leader, community champion, father, husband, dies after coronavirus diagnosis

Marlowe Stoudamire, the 43-year-old consultant, entrepreneur and transformative leader for his work on Detroit 67 project has died from complications related to COVID-19, hospital officials and friends say, as reported by Beth LeBlanc for The Detroit News.

Stoudamire, a 2014 initiate through the historic Nu Omega Chapter, is the second member of the Fraternity who has succumbed from the virus. Larry Edgeworth, an audio engineer for NBC News and a 1986 Nu Omicron initiate, died after testing positive for the coronavirus.

Brother Stoudamire had an unwavering and unconditional love for Detroit, his hometown. A graduate of Cass Technical High school; Stoudamire held a bachelor’s degree from Wayne State University, a master’s from Central Michigan University and attended Harvard Business School’s Young American Leaders program.

One of Stoudamire’s last projects was a partnership with the NHL and the Detroit Red Wings called “Learn, Play, Score,” an initiative to bring hockey to more than 30,000 Detroit youth through street hockey at 79 schools, and 12 parks and rec centers, hockey as a classroom tool, e-sports, scholarships for hockey programs, open skate sessions at Little Caesars arena and more, Nancy Kaffer and Joe Guillen wrote for The Detroit Free Press.

Stoudamire, who served as project director of international business strategy at Henry Ford Health System, was a Detroit advocate who “helped forge bonds” across the city, was “tireless in his love and care for others” and could “light up any room with his ideas and strategic thinking,” Henry Ford Health System COO Bob Riney told the Detroit News.

He also launched Roster Detroit, an initiative to recognize and showcase the talent of black Detroiters, and push back against the narrative that talent has been leaving Detroit and the state. Roster Detroit began as a series of Facebook posts in which Stoudamire would profile friends in his vast network, showing broad audience Detroiters’ talents and accomplishments

Brother Kenneth Harris, president and CEO of the National Business League, Inc., who sponsored Stoudamire into the fraternity, said of Stoudamire, “His trajectory was limitless.”

When Stoudamire was in his 20s, Harris said they gravitated toward each other. They shared interests in entrepreneurship, economics and lifting up the city’s black professionals, Harris said in the Free Press.

“Marlowe had no bounds and no borders. He was truly a transformational figure,” said Harris, a Nu Omega, and a life member who was initiated into the fraternity in 1983 through Beta Psi Chapter. “His spirit will be felt not just in Detroit but internationally.”

Stoudamire is survived by his wife, Valencia, and two young children.