John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Operation HOPE
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Fortune
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Fortune
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TechTranscript
00:00Hi, John.
00:01Hello.
00:02How are you?
00:03Thank you so much for being here.
00:04My pleasure.
00:05So, you founded your non-profit Operation Hope in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots,
00:08and now we're more than 30 years later, and we're still at a point of racial tension in
00:12this country.
00:13So, I want to start off by talking about, of course, no surprise, the election.
00:17How are you feeling about the outcome, and what do you think the impact is going to be
00:21on DEI initiatives and policies?
00:22First of all, honored to be here, and thanks for being a leader in this space.
00:27I really do believe that the private sector is going to be the hero and the shero in the
00:31next 20 or 30 years.
00:32Eighty-eight percent of all jobs in this country come from the private sector, little known
00:36fact.
00:37And as I tell folks I grew up with, even if you wanted to shoot money like a socialist,
00:40you have to first collect it like a capitalist.
00:44I'm not overly concerned about the moment, I just think it's a moment.
00:48This is about insecurity.
00:49It's about economic insecurity.
00:51This election was about the green.
00:55And I've known that for a long time.
00:58I think President Bill Clinton sort of was able to get that right, right in the center.
01:02He had, you know, lower deficits and higher GDP and an inclusive agenda, and I don't think
01:09a lot of people have gotten it right since then.
01:13But this was about insecurity, and people who want a narrative that for a time that
01:17has long passed.
01:19I'm about the future, and I think that's why in your car the front windshield is bigger
01:24than the rear view mirror.
01:26I'm, look, I just think there's just not enough white men.
01:32Why do you say that?
01:33That is not a popular belief, especially right now.
01:36Probably not what you thought would come out of my mouth.
01:38Yeah.
01:39Look, I like math because it doesn't have an opinion.
01:42Okay.
01:43It's a Melody Hobson quote, I just love it.
01:45The math is that I want every white male to be successful if they can be.
01:51I want everybody to be successful, but we need every successful college-educated white
01:56male to be on the field of economics, but mathematically, there's not enough college-educated
02:01successful white men to drive GDP for 30 years.
02:04So do you think education is the problem here, what went wrong, or?
02:07I mean, leadership's always the problem, and courage is always the problem.
02:11But yes, education is the ultimate poverty eradication tool.
02:13I think financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation.
02:17I think that AI literacy is right behind it and next to it, which is why I'm co-chairing
02:22the Financial Literacy for All initiative with the CEO of Walmart, Doug McMillan, and
02:27co-chairing the AI Ethics Council with the Steve Jobs of this generation, which is Sam
02:32Altman.
02:33But going back to, let's hit your question directly, though, I want to answer the question.
02:40White population in 1950 was 90%, not 1850, 1950.
02:45Today, 40% of this country is black and brown.
02:50Within 10 to 15 years, it'll be a majority of minorities.
02:55White wealthy baby boomers, age 65 years of age, will outnumber children by 2034.
03:02I'll repeat that.
03:04Those over 65 will outnumber children by the age 2034.
03:10Everybody is trying to retire and go play golf at the same time.
03:14You guys are a hard audience.
03:15I'm giving you good stuff.
03:16They're just walking off the stage at the same time.
03:20My rich friends, my poor friends would do better if only to stay rich.
03:23You never had a superpower that wasn't the economic power at the same time, but this
03:28economy is 70% consumer spending, 70, and that 70 is going to look different, and that
03:35group has to be financially literate.
03:37They've got to have good jobs.
03:38They have to have a ladder of opportunity.
03:40They've got to be stockholders, shareholders.
03:42We've been here before, by the way.
03:44It was women.
03:45It was your mother.
03:48In 1960s, Johnson and Kennedy proposed affirmative action for blacks.
03:53Nixon, the Republican president, codified it, but the courts said basically put all
03:59these blockages in place, sounds familiar, and blacks did not get those benefits.
04:03Who got the benefits?
04:04Women, specifically, or first of all, white women.
04:07In 1972, a woman could not get a credit card.
04:11Not 1872.
04:13A woman could not get a bank loan without her husband co-signing it.
04:18This is shocking.
04:19This is a real debate.
04:20Women should not have these opportunities and should have a job.
04:23We, of course, made the right decision as a country.
04:27Today, forget the morals now.
04:28Forget the ethics about this.
04:30Put that aside.
04:31Today, women are $6 to $7 trillion of the GDP of this country.
04:35They are a third of the GDP of the largest economy on the planet, which means if we had
04:41gotten that wrong, if we had let our small mindedness overtake us, we'd be a third rate
04:48nation today.
04:49I think we're at this same inflection point.
04:52When I said not enough white men, I mean mathematically.
04:59All those reports have shown the diverse businesses are more profitable, without question.
05:04Diverse regions, including New York City, have more viability and more profitable.
05:11The data is so stark and overwhelming, it's not even close.
05:16I got a call, by the way, backstage from a board member from one of the biggest banks
05:22in the south, technically there in Georgia, if you can figure out who they are, saying
05:29we need minority board members.
05:30This was 20 minutes ago.
05:33Can you help us?
05:34Because our customer base, we want to reflect our customer base, and it's growing.
05:39We're having all kinds of economic prosperity, but we want to reflect that on our board.
05:42Can you help me find somebody?
05:43Sure.
05:44Happy to.
05:45These are the people that are afraid to speak out.
05:46Well, how do you explain to business leaders then?
05:48I think a lot of business leaders mistake DEI for just hiring to fill a quota.
05:54How do you explain to them the purpose and the value behind it in a way that benefits
05:57them and their bottom line?
05:59As I wrote in a piece in Time, and you guys reflected in your pages in Fortune when I've
06:05spoken to you, I think that we're looking at this in the wrong way.
06:09I think DEI became weaponized, it became political, it became emotional.
06:15It was designed, I think, emotionally.
06:17I think whenever you make an emotional decision, it's the wrong one.
06:20I like the math, and inclusive economics, which is my approach, is just neutral.
06:26It's just math.
06:27It's emerging markets.
06:29How do you find professional hockey players in Canada?
06:36They farm club them from elementary school.
06:38How do we find professional football players and baseball players and basketball players
06:41here?
06:42We farm club them in the middle of school.
06:43Where are the future capitalists?
06:46How are we farm clubbing business leaders, entrepreneurs, real estate people, professionals?
06:51We don't.
06:52We just leave it to chance, unless you go to a private school, unless you come from
06:55a wealthy family, in which case, you're talking about that at the dinner table, or you got
06:58an internship in your dad's business.
07:02So we need to create a farm club system, K through college.
07:06I've gotten a bank account for every kindergarten kid at Atlanta Public Schools, the Hope Child
07:11Savings account, and studies have shown that if a kid has a bank account in elementary
07:17school, in kindergarten, they're 50% more likely to go to college.
07:20Hold on.
07:21If that same kid has money in that account, 50 bucks, they're 75% more likely to graduate
07:28from college, because you're connecting education with aspiration.
07:33So if you connect account at kindergarten, which everybody can, I think everybody would
07:38love that idea, financial literacy, get your professionals to go and volunteer in schools
07:43where they're white, poor, rural, or they're mixed race, middle class, or whether they're
07:48black and brown, urban, doesn't matter.
07:52Internships from those schools, apprenticeships from those schools, hiring from those schools,
07:59you're going to reflect America, you're going to find best talent, you're going to find
08:02the Steve Jobs and the Sam Altman's and the Oprah Winfrey's, or wherever your hero shero
08:06is, you're going to find them all over America, because there's genius everywhere.
08:11Now I want to come to the audience in a second for questions, but really fast before I do
08:14that, you mentioned the AI Ethics Council that you founded with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
08:20You had your inaugural meeting in July.
08:22What was the biggest issue that you identified that you think needs to be addressed?
08:26First of all, it terrified me, the first meeting I had with Sam.
08:30How so?
08:31Well, I mean, everything is going to change.
08:33I mean, we have not had this since 1850, 1850 to 1910, you went from the horse and buggy
08:40to the automobile, right?
08:42And the same debate was happening in that 60 year period, everything was horses, agriculture,
08:48transportation, class structures, wealth, it was all about horses.
08:52By 1910, the most valuable thing you could do with a horse was create glue.
08:55And I'm not, I mean, no offense to the horse or horse lovers, but that was the fact in
08:591910.
09:00In 1900 to 1910, there were 100 automobile manufacturers.
09:04And then you had Henry Ford and his great, great grandsons on my board now, you had Henry
09:08Ford who created a middle class by paying the workers enough to buy the automobiles
09:13they were making.
09:14Everything changed.
09:15So that is inflection point again, but it's going to be six years, not 60.
09:22And you got to reimagine everything because it's happening while, I came from the airport
09:26last night, all the fast food restaurants, the convenience stores, it's all a pad.
09:31It's already happening.
09:33You're already punching in your order.
09:35You don't notice it, but it's sort of, you go to CVS or go to your grocery store.
09:39It's a self checkout line with one person overseeing it and all the checkout counters
09:44are gone.
09:45If you have a high school education, no aspiration and no education, you've got a real problem
09:50in America in the next 10 to 15 years.
09:52So we've got, I think, I can't, this topic just overwhelms me.
09:58I'm terrified by it and excited about it.
10:01We're going to possibly cure cancer in 10 years.
10:05But half of all jobs for black America, as an example, and underserved America, poor
10:10whites too, poof, gone.
10:13Of all you have is a high school education, you're gone.
10:15But there's going to be new jobs created.
10:17By the way, accountants, problem for them.
10:20Lawyers, problem, anything that can be automated.
10:23So this is changing everything all at once.
10:27And you combine, but we can equip our children with financial literacy and AI literacy, and
10:34I'm going to be doing a pilot in Atlanta, which I announced next month at my Hope Global
10:37Forum with AI Ethics Council with Sam Altman co-chairing it.
10:42We're going to create a farm club system in Atlanta from college, from kindergarten,
10:47all the way through college, to Farm Club, the next generation of AI learners, innovators,
10:53app creators, inventors.
10:54That's incredible.
10:55Yeah, the future.
10:56That's great.
10:57That is the future.
10:58And I want to save time for one audience question.
10:59I think we have time for it.
11:00Does anyone have one they want to ask?
11:02Okay.
11:03No one's courageous.
11:04No one's courageous.
11:05And that's okay, John, because I have many more I can ask you.
11:09So my last one for you is-
11:11By the way, that didn't surprise me, this issue of diversity and all this stuff.
11:15It's hard to talk about, which leads to my next question, which is that I think a lot
11:19of companies feel that they've seen the legal challenges that other companies have faced
11:23when they've implemented DEI or inclusive economics.
11:27Should companies be fearful of legal challenges, and what do you tell business leaders that
11:30are scared?
11:33You should be fearful of failure.
11:35You should be fearful that you don't have enough customers.
11:38You should be fearful that you don't have enough employees.
11:41You should be fearful that you don't meet your stock market and your price targets and
11:48your income.
11:49What you've told Wall Street quarter to quarter that you're going to hit, I'll say it again,
11:54my rich friends need my poor friends to do better, if only to stay rich.
11:57This is not even a debate.
12:01I had a private debate with Bill Ackman about this, and I can't say what happened in the
12:05conversation.
12:06I'll just say that I had receipts and he didn't.
12:10When I asked him what was behind it, he couldn't answer it, but when I asked him, do you have
12:15a business plan for America other than the one that I presented, he couldn't answer that
12:18too.
12:19In fact, he said he sort of agreed with me, but he wouldn't say that publicly.
12:22I say to anybody, forget DEI, put that aside.
12:27The term's dead.
12:30If you have a business plan that's different from diversity and different from demographics,
12:36please present it.
12:39To me, this is not complicated.
12:41You can't fight demographic changes.
12:46Demographics are destiny.
12:48If you look at the most successful markets in America, what are the two biggest economies,
12:53California and New York?
12:54What are the two most diverse places in America?
12:58California and New York.
12:59What's the biggest economy in the traditional South?
13:01Atlanta.
13:02What's the most diverse place in the traditional South?
13:04Atlanta.
13:05Atlanta's the 10th largest economy in the United States of America, busiest airport
13:08in the world, $450 billion a year in GDP.
13:12We fought over who got the contract and who went to a lunch counter or who got into a
13:16room or all this other silly stuff that people have been fighting over for 100 years.
13:20We're still arguing over silly things about race and position.
13:24Again, unless we want to be speaking Mandarin in 20 years, no disrespect, I love the world.
13:30I love China.
13:31I've been there many times.
13:32That's not what I'm talking about.
13:33Unless you want to be speaking Mandarin or Russian in 20 years, we've got to stop arguing
13:37with each other.
13:39Everybody wants to be an American, but Americans.
13:42We've got to figure out whether we're better together.
13:46Can I get an amen?
13:48That is the perfect way to end it.
13:50Thank you so much, John.
13:51I appreciate you being here with me today.
13:52My pleasure.