John Hope Bryant

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.

 

 

 

From the American Banker Magazine: John Hope Bryant and Jim Clifton on Training Youth Entrepreneurs

Okay, bankers hate regulation. We get this. But the global economic crisis has  given people some very real reasons to push for regulation, and, understandably, bankers and their advocates have pushed back. Regardless of which side you're aligned with, it seems both sides are missing a very important point.

Beyond greed and a few bad actors in the financial services sector, one of the causes of the global economic crisis was the entrenched financial illiteracy of the borrower. Borrowers who should have known better asked, "What's the monthly payment?" instead of, "What's the interest rate?" That's dangerous, especially when so much of the economy depends on responsible and sustainable consumer spending.

One prominent banker—a CEO of a major financial institution, no less—caught the point right away: In private conversation, he  has suggested that the one thing the banking industry should be required to do is to sponsor mandatory financial literacy. 

He says he would like to see every bank adopt one or more local schools and not only provide financial literacy training for every child (your future customers,  we might add), but also select a banker as a role model for them, so these kids can see who they can be when they grow up. He even believes banks should fund kids' business plans, up to $500 each, so that  budding entrepreneurs can start, build and grow companies in their communities.

We at Operation HOPE agree, and we've worked with Gallup to find a way to make it possible. We call it HOPE Business in a Box, and here's how it works:

Read the complete Op-Ed in the American Banker Magazine here.

American Banker Op-Ed: How to End the Homeownership Crisis

When federal regulators finally begin to analyze the national Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, they could conclude that the banking industry is engaged in widespread redlining that affects not only blacks and Hispanics, but all low and moderate income families.  Such a conclusion would be wrong, but not because the numbers are inaccurate.

The national HMDA data from the last year available from the Federal Reserve (2010) shows that less than 1% of home originations by all banks were made to low income families and only one in 11 were made to low to moderate income families. This data also shows that only 5% of all home loans were originated in primarily minority areas (defined as those 70% or more minority) and only one in 9 in neighborhoods with significant minority populations (those where 50% or more of residents are minorities).

This so-called redlining data also shows that only 4% of home loans were made to blacks despite their being 13% of the population and only 6% were made to Latinos, even though they represent 16% of the population. 

Although these statistics are accurate, there is no evidence that banks are deliberately redlining. Instead, we may have an unparalleled example of otherwise well-intentioned government policies causing inadvertent redlining on a scale that may be unprecedented in American history. What's that saying, “no good deed shall go unpunished”?

John Hope Bryant 'Future Flash' at the NY Forum, Gabon (Africa)

 

I was honored to accept the invitation from my friend Richard Attias, CEO of Attias Associates, and by extension, the President of Gabon, President Bongo, to travel with my personal hero and HOPE Global Spokesman Ambassador Andrew Young to Gabon to speak earlier this year at the NY Forum, Africa (in Gabon).  

My session, around sparking Africa Generation Entrepreneurship, was entitled FUTURE FLASH.

Commendation to the organizers for bringing together world leaders in Gabon, for Africa.  Good things are coming, as a result of this Forum. Stay tuned, and mark my word.

 

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 serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, an NYSE Euronext publicly traded company, and a division of $54 billion Ares Capital.

Baltimore Sun Op-Ed: Unleashing Invention In Our Schools

Unleashing invention in our schools

What if millions of kids were given the tools to become entrepreneurs?

October 03, 2012|By Jim Clifton and John Hope Bryant

Everyone knows that the United States is in a terrible business slump, and there's no shortage of opinions about it and solutions for it — but there hasn't been much in the way of notable improvement. So we have been looking deeply into the science of human nature to find an answer and a solution, and here is what we know: There are 6 million small businesses, about 100,000 midsized companies, and fewer than 1,000 really big businesses in the United States. In total, they generate right at 100 million real, full-time jobs and just over $15 trillion in sales and production. That is "America's Company," and it has stopped growing.

We found two reasons for it. One, business leaders aren't in a "growth" state of mind. No matter the size of the company, they have lost their will to dream it and build it. Second, the country is seriously short on start-ups. We need a minimum of 2 million start-up companies per year to keep our economy and jobs pumping, but we are running at a measly 400,000 a year. This is a game-over moment. Nothing fixes the United States' economic problems unless the number of start-ups booms to new highs.

We cannot buy, tax or legislate our way to a sudden, world-changing boom of start-ups. But we can mentor and intern our way to one. The future of our economy is to be found in our youth, because the spirit of free enterprise that builds companies, jobs and economies is most likely to be found there.

Read the complete Baltimore Sun Op-Ed here, and share with your communities.  Start the national discussion on the role of hope in the lives of our kids.

 

Thought Leadership: The New War

My friend Jim Clifton wrote a brilliant new book entitled THE COMING JOBS WAR, which frankly changed almost all of my thinking, on almost everything I am doing. That's saying a lot. It is, without question, one of the best books I have read in the last 20 years. It may in fact be the best, in 20 years, and I read a LOT.

Here is where I am today. The new war is not military, it's economic. Is about jobs, a way of life, the march towards prosperity, and opportunity for all. That's why I am all about the silver rights movement, or "making free enterprise work for all."

Here is my advise to all local city leaders and city leadership -- schedule a monthly meeting with all your top leaders. Bring them from government, from community, from academia, from the private sector, even include faith and the media if you can -- and focus all of this intellectual amd dreaming fire power on one single, pressing question every week or month; "how does this community or city create the next generation of jobs." That's it. That's the only agenda item for the meeting.

And the meeting cannot be or become a 'what I'm against' agenda, a fear-based leadership style I detail in my bestselling book LOVE LEADERSHIP: He New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass). It has to be a 'what I am for' one. It has to be an agenda to win the future, and not just to survive our today. Surviving today brings on images of cutting expenses and raising taxes, which might by the way be necessary. But winning the future is so much more about creating future opportunity, growing the pie and growing the economy by CREATING MORE JOBS. But not just jobs by big businesses, or jobs in government, but the source that most jobs come from -- small businesses, entrepreneurs and start-ups.

This is the state of mind that every local leader should be in. Every governor, every county official, every mayor, and every city council person. Every month, and every week if they can.  And here is what we are doing.

Dreaming, about a new generation of jobs.



John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, 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 the U.S., 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 serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, an NYSE Euronext publicly traded company, and a division of $54 billion Ares Capital.

The Middle East I Thought I Knew. Maybe You Too.

   

When I traveled to Saudi Arabia last week, a week prior to 9/11, I was given advise and counsel by a range of friends and associates. Counsel that respectfully,  was mostly wrong.

With deep, deep respect and condolences to the family and friends of U.S. Ambassador Stevens, who along with three other Americans was senselessly gunned down in Libya on 9/11, the day after I left the region with my Operation HOPE staff -- this is simply not the Middle East that I have come to know. Nor the version of Islam that 99% of my Islamic brothers, sisters and friends practice, or even associate with. But, this is the version of Islam and the Arab world that we were unfortunately reminded of most last week.  This is the version of the Arab world that many warned me against on my trip last week to Saudi Arabia this month.

I was told that the region disliked America and Americans, and that they had no real interest in progress or progressive thinking. That the treatment of women, as an example, was rooted in the religion (Islam), and embedded in the Koran. All, not true. All of it.

Less Bombs, More Hope.

From gang life to grad school

'I would've never seen myself in this position,' says Anton House.

This young man wrote to me after reading my piece, 'How the Entrepreneurship of Inner-City Drug Dealers Could Signal American Strength,' in the Huffington Post this week. This is precisely what I am talking about. He is living proof, that potential lies within every aspect of our great American society.

Lessons, for us all here.

Read his complete article of inspiration, change and empowerment here.

Let's go...


John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, 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 the U.S., 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 serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, an NYSE Euronext publicly traded company, and a division of $54 billion Ares Capital.

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Operation HOPE Expands Reach to Include Financial Inclusion Meetings Worldwide

Global sessions to culminate this November at the HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summit in Atlanta

 

LOS ANGELES – August 9, 2012 – Operation HOPE announced today the expansion of Local Financial Dignity & Inclusion Working Group Meetings to include government, community, faith, academia and private sector leaders of underserved communities around the world. Through HOPE’s technology, meetings will be recorded and included in the global Financial Dignity & Inclusion eLibrary to create a solution-based reservoir for financial dignity, financial inclusion and economic empowerment.

Read the complete story here at Operation HOPE.

 

On HUFFINGTON POST: Why the Entrepreneurship of Inner-City Drug Dealers Might Signal American Strength

I hate thug culture.

But I think that ex-thugs might actually help save our inner-city communities in America.

Specifically, I am talking about the seemingly untapped brilliance of otherwise corrupt drug dealers and gang leaders here in our American inner-cities.

At the recent Clinton Global Initiatives America meeting (CGI America), I spoke about my vision for the re-winning of America, and it centers around our newest innovation with HOPE Business In a Box, Powered by the Gallup-HOPE Index. The example I gave while on stage at CGI America was not a traditional one. It was one of an inner city drug dealer.

As we were talking about the power of the American idea, small business, entrepreneurship and the thing we all need now -- job creation -- the simple question I posed to the audience of more than 1,000 assembled dignitaries and leaders from across the nation was "what do you think a drug dealer is, if not an unethical American entrepreneur?" I went on to make it clear that the whole idea of drug dealers and the gangs I grew up around in Compton, California and South Central Los Angeles actually turn my stomach. That I believe drug dealing to be immoral and unethical, and that "there is a special place in hell reserved for anyone who sells death to their own people, in their own community and in our schools." That said, they may be immoral and unethical, but if someone is a so-called successful drug dealer, one thing they arenot is dumb.

Read the complete article on Huffington Post here.