Visionary management consultant and entrepreneur James was born to Chicago postal workers William and Camille Lowry. He graduated from the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago and Grinnell College in Iowa. Lowry served in the Peace Corps in Tanzania and Puerto Rico before earning a master's degree in public international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. 

In 1968, Lowry was McKinsey Consulting's first African American recruit. At McKinsey, Lowry convinced corporate clients of the value of investing in minority communities and sought to increase the firm's number of African American consultants. He continued this work while attending Harvard Business School, where he served as class president in 1973. On assignment from former Commerce Secretary Juanita Morris Kreps, Lowry produced a report on the status of minorities in the twenty-first century that attracted the attention of numerous municipal and corporate clients, including PepsiCo and Ford. He founded James H. Lowry & Associates in 1975. Lowry's strategic partnership with Ford led to the automotive giant sourcing more than $3 billion dollars of goods and services to more than 300 minority suppliers. In 1981, he approached his former employer, McKinsey, about its disappointing number of African American consultants, which he helped increase to nearly 100 by 1999. 

In 2000, Lowry was recruited to join the prominent Boston Consulting Group. As a president of its Chicago operation, he has been credited for his productive involvement in the North American Black Diversity Initiative, a program that fosters the development of African American management consultant professionals on college campuses and within the company. An adjunct faculty member of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, Lowry developed a lauded education program for minority business professionals in 2002. Lowry has a daughter, Aisha. He lives in Chicago with his mother and his wife, Doris.

Kobie has been a partner at Upfront since 2016, with a core investing focus in SaaS, marketing technology, and emerging technologies including VR and AR. His notable Upfront investments include Bevy, Wave, Cordial and MetaCX. While at Upfront, Kobie also founded and incubated Valence, a platform to unlock economic opportunity, investment and community for Black professionals; he is also on the Advisory Board for PledgeLA, an organization working to increase diversity and equity in tech. Prior to Upfront, Kobie was an investor at Accel, helped found OpenView Venture Partners, and was an investor at Insight Venture Partners, with early investments including Exact Target and Oculus. He was also the Chief Marketing Officer at LA-based REVOLVE, one of the largest global fashion e-commerce players. Kobie graduated from Harvard College.