John Hope Bryant

Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell to Moderate HOPE Forum Discussion with U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry at HOPE Financial Dignity Center at Ebenezer in Atlanta

 

Other key leaders join for critical dialogue about financial services for underserved communities on 50th Anniversary of Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail

ATLANTA, April 16, 2013--  Operation HOPE will host its latest HOPE Forum on Tuesday, April 16th at the HOPE Financial Dignity Center, housed at the Martin Luther King Sr. Community Resources Complex at Ebenezer, led by the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Thomas J. Curry, Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell and other key Atlanta and financial industry leaders. This discussion focused on how to develop financial services and effective new models to serve underserved, under-resourced and low-wealth communities in a new-era banking environment. To read the Comptroller's remarks, click here.

Curry assumed his role as administrator of national banks and chief officer of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in April 2012. He is responsible for the regulation and supervision of more than 2,000 financial institutions, managing over $10 trillion in assets, which represents more than 71 percent of the total commercial banking assets in the nation. The Comptroller also serves as a director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and NeighborWorks® America.

Read the complete article here.

 

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John Hope Bryant Open Letter to Leaders, August, 2012

 

                                                                                                                            August 16, 2012

 

An Open Letter to Leaders

For 20 years Operation HOPE has been about progress for the underserved here in America and around the world.  Now, on our 20th anniversary in 2012, we have hit the internal and external 'reset' button with respect to our strategic focus, our approach, operations, and even the results we seek for those we serve.  What comes next sets us up for the next 20 years. 

For 20 years HOPE was structured around a triangle approach to leadership, where my senior leadership team and I issued directives and the rest of the organization responded, or worse, simply waited for direction.  This approach was actually appropriate for a start-up trying to forge and frame its culture and way of operating.  In June, 2012, we completed an internal restructure around a diamond approach to leadership, where my senior team and I are at the bottom of the triangle, supporting our newly minted group of top-line division presidents, portfolio leaders, local CEOs, market presidents and others who now take 'ownership' of the HOPE brand wherever they live, work and operate.  Accordingly, it is with great pleasure that I announce the following promotions and key appointments:

HOPE Highlighted at 38th Annual Convention of the National Conference of Black Mayors

Atlanta – Global financial dignity nonprofit, Operation HOPE (HOPE) and its Founder, Chairman and CEO John Hope Bryant were honored at the President’s Luncheon with the esteemed President’s Award during the 38th Annual Convention of the National Conference of Black Mayors (NCBM) on June 2, for outstanding impact on community and public policy work.

HOPE was acknowledged for its work to empower constituents in many of the cities headed by NCBM members, along with Bryant’s public policy work in Washington – brought to life by the NCBM – to create a network of local financial literacy councils throughout the US.

Convening May 30 – June 3, the event hosted by the Honorable Kasim Reed and the city of Atlanta, was themed Mayors Agents for Change: Thinking Global, Acting Local and gathered some 300 mayors and distinguished delegates from across the globe to forge collective approaches on national issues of mutual concern.

Also honored during the tribute were: The Honorable Doug Palmer (Trenton, NJ/USA) and His Excellency Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola (Osun State/Nigeria). Others who have received this cherished honor in the past include: Congressman Bennie Thompson, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, Reginald Weaver, and The Honorable Wellington Webb.

Bryant, who has worked closely with the NCBM in his role as Chair of the Subcommittee on the Underserved and Community Empowerment for the President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability, addressed the importance of financial dignity and empowerment in underserved neighborhoods.

Read the complete story on the HOPE Blog here.





John Hope Bryant is an entrepreneur, 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 sole African-American bestselling business author in America, and a Member of the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability for President Barack Obama.

Operation HOPE at 20: A Look at Who We IMPACT

 

A special thank you to Rod McGrew, global chief of brand for Operation HOPE, for producing this summary of Operation HOPE's impact in the lives of people.  Real people. Our clients. The more than 1.5M we have served over the last 20 years.

HOPE Financial Dignity Center Ebenezer Coming Soon...

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This is the latest update on the construction going on at the Martin Luther King, Sr Community Resource Complex, featuring the HOPE Financial Dignity Center at Ebenezer.  The Complex and the HOPE Center are housed within the larger King Center property, and will serve as a gateway for the HOPE 700 Credit Score Communities Initiative, and serve as the new moral center of our work globally. 

L.A. Focus Newspaper Cover Story on John Hope Bryant and Operation HOPE 20th Anniversary

That he has never been limited in his thinking when it comes to his own business potential has a great deal to do with why John Bryant is one of the most influential black men in America.

A fact not lost on three U.S. presidents—Bush, Clinton and Obama—all of whom he has served including his present post on the President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability.

A former goodwill ambassador to the U.S. for the United Nations, Bryant has been dubbed as one of the most authoritative and compelling advocates for poverty eradication in America today. And in the twenty years since he was motivated to establish Operation Hope after the L.A. riots in 1992, the organization has raised and invested $1.4 billion dollars in private capital in its communities serving over two million people. With an annual operating budget of $20 million, 18,000 HOPE Core volunteers and 5,000 partners, the L.A.-headquartered non-profit offers services in 273 U.S. cities and has expanded globally from South Africa to Morocco to Saudi Arabia.

It is the only minority organization with a national partner in homeland security for emergency economical disaster response and since its inception, has responded to hurricane Katrina and 22 other disasters.

“I want a movement. That’s what I’m focused on,” says John Bryant, referring to his vision of empowering underserved youth through financial literacy and entrepreneurial endeavors.

Ironically, it was a movement that started in transit as an inaugural bus tour with Bryant pulling together members of the banking community to tour South Central in the days following L.A.’s bloodiest and most costly riot to get them to see the viability of investing in South Central Los Angeles.

But what they invested just as much in was John Bryant’s vision.

“I don’t believe a person can have social justice until they can have economic justice. This is the new civil rights issue. After civil rights, we have to have silver rights. If Dr. King was alive this is exactly what he’d be doing right now,” insists Bryant.

“The main driver of freedom in the world today is not the vote but access to capital.”

Read the complete cover story at L.A. Focus Newspaper here.

 

Operation HOPE Announces 20 Year Service Report Card

 

The Operation HOPE family is proud to present our 20th anniversary "Report Card" on financial dignity, service leadership and the financial and economic empowermwent of our people, to our people.  The below is our report to the world.  Let me know what you think of our global results to date, and the results we have achieved to date on behalf of others. 

Operation HOPE Announces 20 Year Service Report Card.

20 Years Old Today: Operation HOPE 's Founder Reports on Progress

20 years ago today, on May 5th, 1992, the organization that would change my life and give my life both purpose and incredible meaning -- Operation HOPE -- was born.  

Born after the worst riot and civil unrest in our nation's history, I remember my own personal frustration in the hours and days following the rioting in South Central Los Angeles. I also remember precisely right where I was, at the exact time when our community seemed to come unglued.  I was standing in my westside offices for Bryant Group Companies, then located at Santa Monica and Sepulveda Boulevard in the Westwood Gateway complex buildings.  I was standing there, looking at my community burn.  

I will tell my own personal story in a separate post, but needless to say, what I saw, made me want to act.  And act we did.  Soon, Operation HOPE had assembled its first loyal employees, led by my chief of staff Rachael Doff who is still with me today, soon followed by Lance Triggs, now executive vice president, and not long thereafter came Mary Hagerty, now Mrs. Mary Hagerty Ehrsam, who is first senior vice president and global chief of financial literacy. Then came our own Jena Roscoe, who literally walked out the door from her last job at the White House working in the second term of President Bill Clinton, to run our then new Operation HOPE Office of Government Relations and Public Policy.  And then there was my best friend Rod McGrew, who was the first HOPE Corps volunteer for the organization.  And then there was Fred Smith, our first president, and so many others. Slowly, all the executive and senior leadership team pieces began to come together.

HOPE has four principle divisions, HOPE Coalition America, HOPE Financial Dignity Centers (featuring 700 Credit Score Communities), Banking on Our Future and our newest division, HOPE Business In A Box (inclusive of the Gallup-HOPE Index), and has now been on the move for 20 years, serving South Central Los Angeles and countless underserved communities across the country; even around the world, just like it.  

Here is a quick snapshot of our global results (not including the work and results of Global Dignity, a sister organization to Operation HOPE):

$1.4 billion – the amount raised and invested by HOPE in and for the under-served population, from private and public sources. 

1,000 Plus - the number low-wealth homeowners and small business owners created and funded with responsible mortgage and small business loans.   

Just one of these countless minority owned small business success stories is Drobe Clothing (http://www.drobe.com/Story.html). I purchase all of my professional suits from this HOPE success story, paying full retail, which is recycling black dollars too. Drobe was created by a young black man, not much older than myself when I started Operation HOPE, and now it employs 6 local people, pays its local taxes, and in so doing adds to the whole of Los Angeles.  This is the real story of where most jobs come from.

$500 Million - the value of the subprime mortgages that the Mortgage HOPE Crisis Hotline has modified or restructured in the subprime crisis, at no cost to the borrower. 

155,243 – the number of individuals directly assisted by the National Mortgage HOPE Crisis Hotline.

241,577 – the number of individuals educated in the homebuyer, credit, small business, EITC, and foreclosure prevention workshops.

150,000 – the number of individuals HOPE served in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  And we are still there, serving others years after.

$15 Million – the amount of Earned Income Tax Credits funded to survivors of Hurricane Katrina alone.

273 – the number of cities in the U.S. and South Africa where HOPE currently exists.

5,000 – number of current HOPE partnerships with private sector companies, non-profit organizations, schools and government entities.

30,369 – the number youth and adults educated through the Banking on Our Future program in South Africa alone.

45,828 – the number HOPE Cyber Cafés memberships, including the Cyber Cafe at 3721 South La Brea Avenue, in L.A.

2,000,000 – individuals served to date through HOPE’s Empowerment programs, Banking on Our Future, the HOPE Financial Dignity Centers and HOPE Coalition America.

Today, HOPE is headquartered at Wilshire Boulevard and Hope Street in Downtown, L.A. and led there by our president and chief operating officer Mr. Bill Walbrecher.

Banking the Unbanked Factoid

Only 50% in the world have a bank account.

Worldwide only 1/5 report that they have saved on their account, but one of the success stories in developing countries is "mobile money", or using a mobile phone for payments.

The variance of the bank account rate is huge: between Finland's 99.65% and Denmark's 99.73% all the way to less than 5% in some African and Central Asian countries.

The entire report is here:
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2012/04/19/000158349_20120419083611/Rendered/PDF/WPS6025.pdf

Inspired by my good friend Professor Pekka Himanen of Finland, co-founder with me of Global Dignity

From Gallup.Com: Half of Adults Worldwide Report Having a Formal Bank Account

Fifty percent of adults worldwide have a bank account at a formal financial institution, according to a new Gallup/World Bank study. Account penetration is 89% in high-income economies, versus 41% in developing economies.

 

Read more at GALLUP.com.