Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Operation HOPE, Inc.
Named by American Banker as Innovator of the Year in 2016, and one of Time magazine's 50 Leaders for the Future in 1994, John Hope Bryant is an American entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, and prominent thought leader on financial inclusion, economic empowerment, and financial dignity.
Bryant is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Operation HOPE, Inc., the largest not-for-profit and best-in-class provider of financial literacy, financial inclusion, and economic empowerment tools and services in the United States for youth and adults. He is also the chairman and chief executive officer of Bryant Group Ventures and The Promise Homes Company, and the co-founder of Global Dignity.
His work has been recognized by the last five U.S. presidents, and he has served as an advisor to the last three sitting U.S. presidents. He is responsible for financial literacy becoming the policy of the U.S. federal government. In January 2016, Bryant became the only private American citizen to inspire the renaming of a building on the White House campus, when the U.S. Treasury Annex Building was renamed the Freedman's Bank Building.
Bryant is the author of bestsellers: The Memo: Five Rules for Your Economic Liberation (Berrett-Koehler, September 2017), How the Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class (Berrett-Koehler, 2014), and LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass, 2009). He is one of the only bestselling authors on economics and business leadership in the world today who happens to also be African-American.