John Hope Bryant

Saluting Operation HOPE's Own Mary Hagerty-Ehrsam

 

Mary Hagerty Ehrsam is the Chief Executive Officer of Operation HOPE-New York, and the Division President of the HOPE Youth Empowerment Group for Operation HOPE, Inc. (HOPE) where she has served for 14 years.

Prior to HOPE, Mrs. Hagerty Ehrsam began her career in community economic development and poverty alleviation with the Los Angeles affiliate of Habitat for Humanity. During her tenure with Habitat, Mrs. Hagerty grew the affiliate from a $35,000 annual budget to $3.2 million and constructed sixty-four homes in partnership with recipient homeowners and a global network of volunteers.  She was responsible for the development and implementation of the strategic plan, the volunteer program, and provided overall management of corporate programs, major donor relations, special events, and political and public relations.

HOPE Business In A Box ~ An Initiative That Will Change America

 

And here is our official HOPE Business In A Box video for 2013. Enjoy.

Keep your eyes peeled for our America 2020 Campaign, our national campaign to save America, by Americans, everyday between now and 2020.

Let's go.

 

 

 

A Personal Letter from Operation HOPE Founder, Chairman, and CEO John Hope Bryant and Ambassador Andrew Young

Operation HOPE is "the private banker to the working poor, the underclass, and the struggling middle-class," and the impact of our work can be felt on-the-ground, everywhere we operate.  Our mission is 'silver rights,' or making free enterprise and capitalism work for all.  Financial literacy is the tool, financial dignity is the goal and financial inclusion is the way. 

2012 marked new heights for HOPE's silver rights movement as it continued to reach out and empower underserved populations in new and innovative ways. HOPE divisions currently serving the community include:

 

• Banking on Our Future, focused on keeping the most at-risk youth from repeating the cycles of poverty and despair that has trapped so many in their families and communities by teaching them basic financial literacy, or what we call "the global language of money." 

 

• HOPE Business-In-A-Box/Gallup-HOPE Index, focused on inspiring a generation of young people to become future American assets of economic energy, small business and entrepreneurship.

 

• HOPE Financial Dignity Centers, including our newest HOPE Financial Dignity Center at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr''s Ebenezer Church in Atlanta, Georgia, are where we approve clients day one, subject to the resolution of their primary denial factors, and raise credit scores on average 120 points over 18 months of active counseling. We call it the 700 Credit Scores Communities Initiative.  The HOPE Center at Ebenezer marks our 11th HOPE Center across the nation, and is the proud anchor for the new Martin Luther King. Sr. Community Resource Complex next to Ebenezer Church.  Most people know that Daddy King, as he was lovingly called, co-pastored Ebenezer Church with his son, Dr. King, but what they don't know is that Daddy King served on the board of a bank for 40 years.  Even more than 50 years ago, the King legacy was alive with civil rights, and silver rights empowerment, too. A special thank you to our HOPE Center signature partners, including Bank of the West and Union Bank on the west coast, E*TRADE FINANCIAL in New York City and Washington, DC, and at Ebenezer in Atlanta, FINANCIAL SERVICES ROUNDTABLE members SunTrust Bank, State Farm Insurance, LPL Financial/NestWise, Wells Fargo Bank,MasterCard, and BMO Harris Bank, along with supporting partners including the Coca-Cola Company,Kaplan University, Equifax, the United Way of Greater Atlanta, amongst others.

 

• HOPE Coalition America, which is the national partner with FEMA around emergency financial disaster preparedness, response and recovery, or the "economic Red Cross" for the nation.  HCA responded to, and served, more than 200,000 survivors following Hurricane Katrina, and we are responding to Hurricane Sandy now. 

 

• HOPE Government Relations & Public Policy, and HOPE Forums, which both advance responsible public policy and help to shape, engaged public opinion.  The recent HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summitfeaturing U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, with more than 1,500 delegates from 30 countries, covered by 50 major media outlets, is but one example of our focus here.

Read the complete personal letter on the HOPE Blog here.

Operation HOPE Announces the Founding HOPE Faculty Fellows for 2013

 

Inspired by a vision and an idea from Dr. Belinda Johnson White, Associate Professor at Morehouse College, last year Operation HOPE and HOPE FILE (Fellows, Interns and Loaned/Retired Executives) launched the new HOPE Faculty Fellows Program.  

Herein we present the founding group of HOPE Faculty Fellows for 2013.  Inspired leaders, who will now help Operation HOPE change our world, and chart a new way forward with silver rights empowerment for all.

 

 

 

 

After We Inaugurate Our President, Welcome Our New Entrepreneurship Generation: Join Us for the Gallup-HOPE Index Forum, Washington, DC, 2013

For those interested in learning more about the Gallup-HOPE Index Forum, 2013, contact Jodi Brockington, deputy director of HOPE Forums.

 

 

A New Introduction Video Featuring HOPE Business In A Box, Powered by the Gallup-HOPE Index

Check it out and be inspired to change the lives of a generation.  Go to Operation HOPE for more details on the HOPE Business In A Box innovation, and the Gallup-HOPE Index that powers it.

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:

Operation HOPE Opens New Regional Office at Gallup Building in Washington, DC

Operation HOPE is expanding its reach in the Mid-Atlantic Region, securing office space for administrative use at the Gallup Building in Washington, DC.  More than a hundred people gathered at the Gallup headquarters on July 16th to celebrate the official Grand Opening.

During a packed reception, the Honorable Thomas M. Hoenig, Board Member FDIC made special remarks to crowded audience.  Gallup CEO and Chairman, Jim Clifton was on hand to lend to the importance of the occasion and speak about Gallup’s commitment to the “silver rights” empowerment organization and the Gallup-HOPE Index.

Girls Rule

The Gender Gap and How Empowering Women Grows Society and GDP

This should not be a difficult argument to make. Let's start by saying that without women, there would be far fewer men (smile).  Without my mother Juanita Smith, I literally would not be here today, and without my mother as a strong, working, capable, self-starting role model in our family, I would not be who I am today, and my sister Mara (Montie) Hoskins would arguably not be the success story in life that she is today either. Our mother was everything to us.  She "did" everything, too -- from dedicated homemaker to working professional, to sideline entrepreneur and handicraft maker, to my own dedicated school booster, suit-maker (mine) and inspirer-in-chief for the household.  

Read the complete story here.

 

The Aspen Institute and the Re-Winning of America

It is appropriate that almost immediately following the Aspen Institute's annual Ideas Festival, Ambassador Andrew Young and I would speak at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Summit, organized by our friend Lisa Mensah and her team. It was a well organized and purposeful meeting, but such is not the point.

Inspired by the Ideas Festival, columnist David Brooks wrote a piece for The New York Times last week entitled "The Opportunity Gap". This piece troubled most people who read it, but it only confirmed what Ambassador Young and I, and our friend Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup, already knew; that there was a hug and widening gap not only between the rich and poor adults in this country, but more frighteningly, amongst our children. Brooks article, all backed up by evidence, stats and comprehensive research, also makes the point that my mentor Quincy Jones has made to us repeatedly, and drives his involvement in our 5 MILLION KIDS initiative and the recent launch of the Banking on Our Future, Quincy Jones Edition: that "it takes 20 years to change a culture."

David Brooks states that:

It's not only that richer kids have become more active. Poorer kids have become more pessimistic and detached. Social trust has fallen among all income groups, but, between 1975 and 1995, it plummeted among the poorest third of young Americans and has remained low ever since. As Putnam writes in notes prepared for the Aspen Ideas Festival: "It's perfectly understandable that kids from working-class backgrounds have become cynical and even paranoid, for virtually all our major social institutions have failed them -- family, friends, church, school and community." As a result, poorer kids are less likely to participate in voluntary service work that might give them a sense of purpose and responsibility. Their test scores are lagging. Their opportunities are more limited.

This is the way that David Brooks frames this generational crisis of 20 years. I would say that in the last 20 years we have made dumb sexy. We have dumbed-down, and even celebrated it (example: Diesel Jeans and their horribly successful BE STUPID branding and advertising campaign). Now we must make smart sexy again. We must make smart cool, so that kids want to stay in school.

Against this backdrop, we also must look at not only the generational advantages of the wealthy, but the incentive structure that is helping to make engaged and wealthy kids more engaged and wealthy, and so-called poor children more disengaged, disinterested and in the end, opportunity poor. We must look at the educational incentive system itself.

READ THE COMPLETE HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE HERE.