John Hope Bryant

Bryant Snippet: Bryant to Speak at Healthways Well-Being Summit 2013

John Hope Bryant of Bryant Speaks is scheduled to be a featured speaker this week before national leaders at the Healthways Well-Being Summit, 2013, on the topic "The Business Case for Hope: My Story, Your Kids, Our Future."  

Bryant will go into some detail about the Operation HOPE and Gallup Organization vision to use youth behavioral economics to spike youth aspiration, hope, well-being, engagement, financial literacy and economic energy, amongst a generation of young Americans.  America 2020.

Our target -- 30 million youth, 4th grade through 12th grade in America's public schools.

Our mission -- America 2020, or 1 million youth empowered to restore the American Dream for future generations.

More information to follow, or check out America 2020 and the Gallup-HOPE Index here.

 

 

Saluting Operation HOPE's Own Jena Roscoe

 

Jena Roscoe serves as First Senior Vice President and Chief of Government Affairs and Public Policy, Operation HOPE. Ms. Roscoe is the first Senior Director of the East Coast Regional Corporate Headquarters at Gallup in Washington, DC.  

Jena Roscoe is in charge of the HOPE Office of Government Relations and Public Policy, which is a global responsibility.  In this post Ms. Roscoe has managed the relationship of and between three Presidential Administrations, from (Democrat) President Bill Clinton to (Republican) President George W. Bush, to (Democrat) President Barack Obama.

During her tenture at Operation HOPE, Ms. Jena Roscoe has led or otherwise helped to marshall in almost every major national private/public partnership and national government agreement with HOPE over the past decade; including our HOPE Coalition America national agreement with FEMA, our national agreements with the FDIC, the Veterans Administration, the creation of the SBA Office of Entrepreneurship Education, and the Operation HOPE 5-year partnership with the FINANCIAL SERVICES ROUNDTABLE, amongst many others.  

Ms. Roscoe manages John Hope Bryant's personal public policy portfolio, including his involvement as a Presidential Appointee to the U.S. CDFI Fund at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, the U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability, the portfolio of more than 100 Local Financial Literacy Councils for the Subcommittee on the Underserved and Community Empowerment for the President's Council, under President Barack Obama.

Operation HOPE and the Gallup-HOPE Index Cited in U.S. Senate Resolution for Financial Literacy Month, 2013

  

 

Operation HOPE, the organization that helped to pioneer financial literacy as U.S. federal policy in January, 2008, as then President George W. Bush signed an Executive Order inspired by our on-the-ground work, is proud to once again have its work cited amongst U.S. policy makers.

The U.S. Senate passed a resolution establishing Financial Literacy Month for 2013.  The U.S. Senate resolution cited and referenced statistics from our 100-year partnership with Gallup, and specifically the Gallup-HOPE Index Report for 2011 and 2012, 

A special thank you to our HOPE Office of Government Relations & Public Policy, led by Jena Roscoe, and our HOPE Office of Innovation, Research & Assessment.

 

 

Brad Hanson Joins the Operation HOPE Midwestern Board

LOS ANGELES – April 11, 2013 – Financial dignity nonprofit Operation HOPE (HOPE) announced today that Brad Hanson, president of Meta Payment Systems, has taken a seat on the organization’s Midwestern Board of Directors. During his two-year term he will champion financial literacy initiatives, and economic empowerment for youth and adults living in under-served communities.

With this appointment Hanson becomes the latest “silver rights” ambassador to the board. As a member of the Midwestern board Hanson will provide ongoing feedback and guidance to help promote program effectiveness throughout the region. Additionally, he will help generate and nurture support of elected officials, school administrators and community-based organizations for financial literacy initiatives and programs.

Brad Hanson has more than 20 years of experience in financial services, including numerous banking, card industry and technology-related capacities. During his career Brad has played a significant role in the development of the prepaid card industry. His experience working with regulators and many financial innovators provides a unique perspective on the history of prepaid, current threats and opportunities, and the changing roles of key participants in the prepaid value chain.

Read complete story here.

 

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Who is America's $10 Trillion Man You Have Never Met?

Saluting Operation HOPE's Own Lance Triggs

Operation HOPE Receives Red Cross Grant for Sandy Recovery

Saluting Operation HOPE's Own Mary Hagerty-Ehrsam

Brad Hanson Joins the Operation HOPE Midwestern Board

LOS ANGELES – April 11, 2013 – Financial dignity nonprofit Operation HOPE (HOPE) announced today that Brad Hanson, president of Meta Payment Systems, has taken a seat on the organization’s Midwestern Board of Directors. During his two-year term he will champion financial literacy initiatives, and economic empowerment for youth and adults living in under-served communities.

With this appointment Hanson becomes the latest “silver rights” ambassador to the board. As a member of the Midwestern board Hanson will provide ongoing feedback and guidance to help promote program effectiveness throughout the region. Additionally, he will help generate and nurture support of elected officials, school administrators and community-based organizations for financial literacy initiatives and programs.

Brad Hanson has more than 20 years of experience in financial services, including numerous banking, card industry and technology-related capacities. During his career Brad has played a significant role in the development of the prepaid card industry. His experience working with regulators and many financial innovators provides a unique perspective on the history of prepaid, current threats and opportunities, and the changing roles of key participants in the prepaid value chain.

Read complete story here.

 

Related articles

David Boehmer, Heidrick & Struggles' Regional Managing Partner, Gains Seat on Operation HOPE Northeastern Board

Who is America's $10 Trillion Man You Have Never Met?

Saluting Operation HOPE's Own Lance Triggs

Operation HOPE Receives Red Cross Grant for Sandy Recovery

Saluting Operation HOPE's Own Mary Hagerty-Ehrsam

From Gallup Business Journal: Dead Wrong ~ America's Economic Assumptions

 

The U.S. could go broke due to faulty leadership assumptions. Gallup's CEO offers three correct assumptions that, if acted on, would save the American economy.

by Jim Clifton

Chairman and CEO of Gallup

During my 40 years at Gallup, I've observed that one of the main reasons very talented leaders fail is because their thinking failed them. Not their leadership or management skills, which in many cases are just fine, but their thinking. Specifically, failed leaders in business and politics are usually wrong about a core premise that drives all their strategies. Because they are so wrong about that premise, every subsequent decision they make is bad.

An innovation has zero value until a talented businessperson finds a customer for it.

Let me illustrate. Thirty years ago, I conducted a project in a Midwestern city for a group of talented investors and businesspeople. This was a time when McDonald's franchises were growing quickly, and these businesspeople wanted to emulate the fast-food chain's success. They came to the conclusion that McDonald's was soaring because of one key attribute: speed of service.

So these smart, talented people built everything around this one assumption, and they committed to delivering food faster. Pneumatic tubes shot the food to the customer, and the company touted its service as the fastest. They even named the chain "Chutes."

As I recall, they did get hamburgers and fries to their customers faster than McDonald's did. They achieved their goal. Yet they went broke because we discovered after the fact that the primary reason McDonald's was exploding was because customers loved the taste of their food -- especially the french fries. Speed was not the core reason McDonald's customers ate there; taste was. Chutes' core assumption was wrong, and they went broke.

I could share hundreds of examples like this. Here's another one with far greater implications for the world. Many people in the highest levels of U.S. government think that 1.5 billion Muslims are uncomfortable with the West because they "hate us for our freedom" and that "religion divides us." So, leaders build policy -- war, economic sanctions, and anti-terror campaigns -- around these assumptions. But Gallup World Poll data tell another story entirely.

The world's Muslims don't hate us because of our freedom or our way of life or because they're religious fanatics. Gallup finds that their discomfort comes predominantly from a hopelessness rooted in economic despair and joblessness. This is an economic problem, not a religious one. Yet too often, policies are created around these wrong assumptions.

When Tunisian food vendor Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire, thus igniting the Arab Spring, he didn't yell, "Death to America" or "Allahu akbar." He cried out, "I just want to work!"

How Do We Save Our Cities?

“We need to move local business engagement in cities all across America from 5% to 20%--nothing else really matters until you cross this threshold.”  Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO, Gallup

More to come around why we believe this is so important, and our strategy for making this real. In the meantime, check out...

CNN Highlights Operation HOPE, Banking on Our Future and the Power of Financial Literacy on Inner-City Decision Making

 

This video piece from CNN, which is scheduled to air this week, clearly shows the power of financial literacy and financial dignity in the lives of inner-city youth and their decision making. The piece also features new friend to HOPE Russell Simmons, who was a closing speaker at our recenty HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summit on November 14th-15th, 2012 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Check it out and let CNN know what you think.  Write them a letter and share the video through socal media with family and friends.  Let's start a new conversation with and for our youth.

This is a new silver rights empowerment movement for a new generation of future leaders.

Let's go.

 

John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass), the only African-American bestselling business author in America, and is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Under-Served and Community Empowerment for the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, for President Barack Obama.  Mr. Bryant is the co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the U.S. He is also a co-founder of Global Dignity with HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and Professor Pekka Himanen of Finland. Global Dignity is affiliated with the Forum of Young Global Leaders and the World Economic Forum.  Mr. Bryant is a thought leader represented by the Bright Sight Group for public speaking. Mr. Bryant serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation (NYSE: ACRE), a specialty finance company that is managed by an affiliate of Ares Management LLC, a global alternative asset manager with approximately $59 billion in committed capital under management as of December 31, 2012. 

The Secret Weapon That Will Save U.S. Entrepreneurship

January's Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey has me more frightened than ever about America’s future.

I already knew that our GDP was stalling, if not falling. The Department of Commerce reported recently that GDP declined in the fourth quarter of last year, at an annualized rate of 0.1%. Meanwhile a minimum GDP of 2.5% is required just to tread water economically, in my view, though I think we really need GDP growth of about 4.5% to get the economy humming again.

And I already knew that unemployment was stuck at right around 8%; when you add in those who are “underemployed,” according to Gallup data, it jumps to 17%. These figures tell the story of what was a prosperous and stable democracy that’s now going nowhere.

But the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey reveals the biggest nightmare metric of all: 30% of small-business owners are worried they may not be in business in 12 months. I am also worried because new business startups have fallen below 400,000 per year, and the country needs a bare minimum of 1 million new startups annually, in my estimate, to keep the economy running. We cannot, on top of this, have existing companies going out of business.

These findings are so alarming because the total number of U.S. employees within small businesses is significantly larger than in big business. The fact is, new business startups mean everything to America, because without them, our GDP cannot grow and unemployment will continue to rise. The miracle of economic life in the United States begins with one business starting up -- that moment of conception, if you will.

Read the rest of the story here.

 

 

 

The HUFFINGTON POST: Solving Poverty. WANTED: A New Revolution of 100 Million Youth in the Middle East

  John Hope Bryant

Bestselling business leadership author and philanthropic entrepreneur

The Middle East then and now. The choice is simply one of lighting candles, or cursing the darkness, but it is a choice that the leaders there must make. We cannot do it for them.

On September 12th, 2012, I had just returned from the Middle East region on the day prior to the devastating Libyan terrorist act of September 11th, 2012. I was visiting Saudi Arabia, and experiencing a very positive engagement with business and political leaders in the region, as we launched an aspect of our empowerment work there. I had been invited to speak before the Young President's Organization (YPO), even the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce. I met with the Minister of Labor for Saudi Arabia, who was but one of the leaders in the audience during my Chamber speech, fully engaged around a new vision and plan for the region's youth. It was obvious to me, these leaders had made a clear choice to "light a candle" towards the future.

Libya on the other hand, and thereafter other trouble spots throughout the Middle East region, unfortunately chose to turn backwards, simply cursing the darkness. At the end of the day, I choose to stay focused on that which I saw with my own eyes and experienced personally; substantive, new era leaders who have decided to light candles and build a society for all. Candles towards a brighter future. The respectful opening up of society. A view towards helping the average person to achieve their own level of aspirational success. Not a western version of aspirational success, but one of their own making. One that respected, and in fact embedded their deep and rich cultural beliefs.

I traveled to Saudi Arabia with a simple message -- in the MENA Region (Middle East and North Africa), according to the World Bank you have a population that will be 60% under the age of 25 by 2020, and in Saudi Arabia this is already the case.

Read and share the complete article here.