John Hope Bryant

HOPE Snippet: U.S. Surgeon General Headlines HOPE Forum in Atlanta During National Women's Health Week

Operation HOPE Hosts Top Medical Leaders for Discussion about Preventive Health and Affordable Health Care 

ATLANTA, May 17, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Recognizing National Women's Health Week, Operation HOPE (HOPE) hosted U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin, MD, MBA for a discussion on the relationship between physical and fiscal health in America. The Surgeon General was joined by Chief Medical Officer of Centene Corporation Dr. Mary Mason and Chief Medical Officer of Peach State Health Care Dr. Dean Greeson. Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, dean and executive vice president of the Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) moderated the discussion at the Operation HOPE Financial Dignity Center at Ebenezer in Atlanta.

As the fourth installment in the HOPE Forum series, the event covered the important topic of "Investing in Your Health." The in-depth discussion explored the impact of health care on the economy and how individuals can invest wisely in personal health to improve the nation's overall well-being.

Dr. Benjamin, who has served as the U.S. Surgeon General since 2009, spoke in great detail about the significance of preventive health measures and promoted her pet project, "Walking to Fitness," a new campaign she is helping to lead.

Operation HOPE Founder and CEO, John Hope Bryant underscored the linkage between physical and fiscal health for individuals and families, especially those in underserved communities.

Read the full article on the Wall Street Journal here.

 

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Solving Poverty: Financial Illiteracy Is Everywhere -- Rich and Broke -- Middle and Broke -- We're All Broke

Financial literacy may not be a sexy topic, but financial illiteracy is literally everywhere. And in this new economic age we all live in today, it's wrecking lives, hopes and dreams both large and small.

The number one cause of divorce, is money.
The number one reason for domestic abuse, is money.
The number one reason why police get injured on the job is not car chases or shootouts, but domestic abuse calls. 
The number one reason why minorities (and increasingly mainstream America too) drop out of college is not grades or GPA, but money.
The number one cause for heart disease is stress, so says the American Heart Association. The number one reason for stress – money.

Financial illiteracy is no longer the thing we assign to the so-called poor, and those without a college degree, or a degree of material success.  It is something that now effects and impacts all of us, and we need to do something about it. Now.  But before we put out the urgent call to our elected officials, we need to also look at ourselves, our own lives, and our own decisions. 

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.

 

 

Banking on Our Future and 100 HOPE Corps Volunteers Bring Financial Literacy Empowerment to Silver Springs, Maryland

Recently my Operation HOPE, Washington, DC and Operation HOPE, Maryland teams came together and had a very successful Banking on our Future volunteer event at Francis Scott Key Middle School in Silver Spring, MD. There were over 100 HOPE Corps volunteers present and involved, and included employees from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Women in Housing and Finance, Capital One, Fannie Mae, M&T Bank, Bank of India, BB&T Bank, Sandy Spring Bank, Bank of America, First Mariner Bank, FDIC, City First Bank, ETrade Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of Georgetown, and FINRA.

A special thank you to my friend and financial dignity supporter, Maryland State Comptroller Peter Franchot, who teamed up with US Comptroller of the Currency Barry Wides to teach a Banking on Our Future financial literacy class. Maryland Comptroller Franchot and US Deputy Comptroller Wides also spoke to the volunteers about Franchot's mission to get each county in Maryland to adopt a graduation requirement for a financial literacy class in the senior year. Severak counties have already signed on to support this financial dignity leadership initiative of Comptroller Franchot.  Operation HOPE certainly supports him.

A special acknowledgement to Jackie Starr, who is our Operation HOPE market president for the Washington, D.C. and Maryland.

Operation HOPE, Washington, DC and Operation HOPE, Maryland are part of the larger mission of Operation HOPE, which is now a leading global provider of financial literacy to financial dignity empowerment services for the underserved, the working poor and the struggling middle class.

With 2 million clients served, 20,000 HOPE Corps volunteers, and more than $1.5 billion in private capital directed into America's low wealth and underserved communities, creating thousands of homeowners, small business owners and entrepreneurs over the past 20 years, Operation HOPE is making a difference.  But we cannot achieve our mission alone.  We cannot seek to advance the final work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., eradicating poverty and achieving a measure of economic justice for all, alone.

Operation HOPE operates the HOPE Financial Dignity Center Atlanta at Ebenezer Church, located on the campus of the King Center and as the anchor tenant of the Martin Luther King, Sr. Community Resource Complex.  Martin Luther King, Sr, or "Daddy King" as he was called, co-pastored Ebenezer Church with his son Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement, and served on the board of a bank for 40-years; a little known fact.  Daddy King was also focused on making free enterprise work for all, as his son was focused in the last years of his life on poverty eradication and economic justice.

The mission of Operation HOPE is civil rights to silver rights, or making free enterprise work for all.

 

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National Urban League's State Of Black America Finds Uneven Progress In The Pursuit Of Equality

Marc Morial, President and of the CEO National Urban League, outlines his agenda for and around 2013 State of Black America Report.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

 

John Hope Bryant, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, serves as contributing author to the State of Black America 2013 report, focused on "Financial Dignity In An Economic Age."

WASHINGTON, April 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --The National Urban League's (www.nul.org) State of Black America report released today concludes that despite social and economic gains, the African-American equality gap with whites has changed little since 1963—the year of the Great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the height of the civil rights movement.

​To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Great March, this year's State of Black America—Redeem the Dream: Jobs Rebuild America includes a 50-year retrospective analysis conducted through the lens of The Equality Index®. The report shows that while the African-American condition has improved, including achievements in educational attainment and employment, this progress has occurred largely within the Black community. Double-digit gains in education, employment and wealth contrast sharply with the single-digit gains made in those same areas compared to whites.

Report more from the National Urban League on the 2013 Report release here.

See the complete report here.

 

John Hope Bryant is an empowerment leader, the 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.

 

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U.S. Surgeon General to Headline HOPE Forum in Atlanta May 17th, 2013

U.S. Surgeon General to Headline HOPE Forum in Atlanta May 17th, 2013

May 02 2013

U.S. Surgeon General to Headline HOPE Forum in Atlanta May 17th, 2013

Medical leaders to discuss national healthcare plan and responsible investments in health

ATLANTA – May 2, 2013 – Operation HOPE (HOPE), the financial literacy and empowerment nonprofit, will host U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjaminfor “Investing in Your Health,” a HOPE Forum exploring the impact of healthcare on the economy and solutions to improve the nation’s overall wellbeing. Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, dean and executive vice president of the Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) will moderate the event on May 17 at the Operation HOPE Financial Dignity Center at Ebenezer in Atlanta.

The third installment on the HOPE Forum series in Atlanta, “Investing in Your Health,” will discuss the relationship between physical and fiscal health in America and how to invest wisely in personal health. The Forum will begin at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, May 17 at the HOPE Financial Dignity Center, Ebenezer, located at the Martin Luther King, Sr. Community Resource Complex at 101 Jackson Street, NE. Operation HOPE Founder, Chairman and CEO, John Hope Bryant will also participate in the Forum.

Dr. Benjamin has served as surgeon general since 2010. She is the former associate dean for Rural Health at the University Of South Alabama College Of Medicine in Mobile and past chair of the Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States. In 1995, she was the first physician under age 40 and the first African-American woman elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees. She has served as president of the American Medical Association Education and Research Foundation and chair of the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.

Read the complete article here on the HOPE Blog.

 

 

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Statement of Support from Operation HOPE for the Nomination of Congressman Mel Watt

Washington, D.C. and our nation need strong and effective leadership today more than ever. Congressman Mel Watts seems to fit that description to me. Important to me, one of my key employee's family was a constituent of the then Congressman in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they uniformly endorse him. I am told that while Congressman, Mr. Watt encouraged the local adoption of our Banking On Our Future, College Edition Program, where we educated college students in North Carolina on financial literacy. This suggests a man who doesn't just talk about things, but seeks to do thing too.

Congressman Watt has over 20 years of congressional experience on the Financial Services Committee, where he sponsored and/or co-sponsored economic empowerment legislation around homeownership, consumer protection, entrepreneurship, small business, and financial literacy. He understands the needs of prospective homeowners, the practical interests of the private sector, and the necessary role of the federal government.

The HUFFINGTON POST ~ Solving Poverty: Atlanta in Black and Green, the Tale of Two Cities

   

John Hope Bryant

Bestselling business leadership author and philanthropic entrepreneur

As I noted in another 'Solving Poverty' piece for The Huffington Post, the new racism today is actually poverty.

Yes, it feels really bad if a racist calls you a highly offensive name, but it is completely un-dignifying when you cannot pay your rent, make your mortgage payment, or you find that your car has been repossessed by the lender while you were sleeping. You can walk away from the racist. And more so, when you know who you are, there is actually very little the racist can say or do to change the way you feel about yourself.

You cannot walk away from poverty.

The reality of poverty faces you as a parent every morning when your child looks up at you for lunch money, and as you reach into your pocket, finding only lent and marked up job wanted ads instead.

Or every time you stop for gasoline and have to stop the pump at $6, or you're at the grocery store, intent on collecting the ingredients for that special meal for your family, but finding that you are $20 short and have to put the healthiest choices back.

Poverty faces you in the unfortunately regular arguments you have with your spouse or mate (money is the number one cause for domestic abuse and divorce in America today), or the first time you have to address your teenage child, whose daydreaming about which four-year college they desperately wish to attend. And today, what I am describing is not a 'Black thing,' it's a 'green thing.'

Whether you are white, black, red, brown or yellow, today you just want to see some more green. U.S. currency, that is. We are all in this mess together.

Read, comment and share the complete article on the Huffington Post here.

 

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