Economic impact
Founded the Mesurado Group of Companies in 1962, building it into Liberia's largest indigenous private conglomerate of the 20th century. By 1970, the group employed approximately 1,500 people across subsidiaries in industrial fishing, ice production, soap manufacturing, and livestock operations, making it the country's largest private employer outside the rubber concessions, per contemporaneous Liberian government economic reports. The Mesurado Fishing Company operated a fleet that supplied a significant share of Monrovia's fresh fish market through the 1960s and 1970s. Tolbert served concurrently as Minister of Finance of Liberia from 1966 to 1973, a tenure during which he pursued domestic industrialisation as a counterweight to the country's dependence on foreign-owned concessions. He died in 1975.