John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Operation HOPE
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Rethinking D.E.I. - The Economics Of Inclusion

Photograph by Michael O’Shea for Fortune

Conferences

Hi, John. Thank you so much for being here. So you founded your nonprofit operation. Hope in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots. And now we're more than 30 years later and we're still at a point of racial tension in this country. So I wanna start off by talking about, of course, I'm surprise the election. How are you feeling about the outcome? And what do you think the impact is gonna be on DE I initiatives and policies? Uh First of all, I wanted to be here and thanks for uh being a leader in this space. I really do believe that the private sector is gonna be the hero and the shero in the next 20 or 30 years, 88% of all jobs in this country come from the private sector. They don't know in fact. And as I tell folks, I grew up with, even if you wanted to shoot money like a socialist, if the first collected like a capitalist. Um I'm not overly concerned about the moment. I think it's a moment. This is about insecurity, it's about economic insecurity. This election was about the green. Um it, it, it and I, I've known that for a long time. Um, I think President Bill Clinton sort of was able to get that right. Right in the center. He has, you know, lower, uh, uh, deficits and higher GDP and an inclusive agenda and I don't think a lot of people have gotten it right. Uh, since then. Um, but this is about insecurity and people who want a narrative that for a time that has long passed, I'm about the future and I think that's why the in your car, the front windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror. Uh I I I'm look, I just think there's not enough white men. Why do you say that? That is not a popular belief, not what you thought would come out of my mouth. Look. Uh I like math because it doesn't have an opinion. So Melody Hopson quote, I just love it. Um The math is that uh I want every white male to be successful if they can be, I want everybody to be successful. But we we need every successful college educated white male to be on the field of economics. But mathematically, there's not enough college educated, successful white men to drive GDP for 30 years. So do you think education is the problem here? What went wrong or I mean, leadership is always the problem and courage is always the problem. But yes, education is the ultimate poverty eradication tool. I think financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation. I, I think that A I literacy is right behind it and next to it, which is why I'm co chairing the, the Financial Literacy For All Initiative with the CEO of Walmart. Uh Doug mcmillan is and co-chair in the A I Ethics Council with the Steve Jobs of this generation, which is Sam Altman. Um But going back to, let's hit your question directly though, I want to answer the question. Uh White white population in 1950 was uh 90% not 1850 1950. Today, 40% of this country is black and brown. Within 10 to 15 years, it'll be a majority of minorities. Um White wealthy baby boomers read what, you know, 65 years of age will outnumber Children by 20 th by, by 2034 I'll repeat that those over 65 will outnumber Children by the age of 2034. Everybody is trying to retire and go play golf at the same time. All you guys are hard audience, I'm giving you good stuff. Uh They're just walking off the stage at the same time and my rich friends, my poor friends would do better if only to stay rich. If you've never had a superpower, that wasn't the economic power at the same time. But this, this economy is 70% consumer spending 70 that 70 is going to look different and that group has to be financially literate. They've got to have a good job. They have to have a ladder of opportunity. They've gotta be stockholder shareholders. We've been here before, by the way, it was women. It was your mother. And in, um, in 19 sixties, Johnson and Kennedy proposed affirmative action for blacks, Nixon, the Republican president codified it. But the courts, uh, uh, said, basically put all these blockages in place. Sounds familiar and blacks did not get those benefits. Who got the benefits? Women specifically or first of all white women in 1972 a woman could not get a credit card, not 1872 a woman could not get a bank loan without her husband cosigning it. This is shocking. This is a real debate like women should not have these opportunities that should have a job. We of course made the right decision as a as a country today. Forget the morals. Now forget the ethics about this. Put that aside today. Women are $67 trillion of the GDP of this country where they are a third of the GDP of the largest economy on the planet, which means if we had gotten that wrong, if we let our small mindedness overtake us, we'd be a third rate nation today. I think we're at the same inflection point. And so when I said not enough white men, I mean, mathematically that the so you, you, you, you look diversity, all those reports have shown the diverse businesses are more profitable with, without question, diverse regions including New York City are, have, have very more viability and more profitable. This is not even, the data is so stark and, and overwhelming. It's not even close. I got a call by the way backstage from a board member from a uh one of the biggest banks in the South and in Georgia, technically, they're in Georgia. Uh if you can figure out who they are um saying we need minority board members. This was 20 minutes ago. Can you help us? Because our customer base is, is, you know, we want to reflect our customer base and it's growing, we're, we're, we're having all kind of economic prosperity, but we want to reflect that on our board. Can you help me find somebody sure happy to this is the people are, they're afraid to speak out. Well, how do you explain to business leaders? And I think some, a lot of business leaders mistake, you know, de I for just hiring to fill a quota. How do you explain to them the purpose and the value behind it in a way that benefits them and their bottom line? So as I, I wrote in the piece uh in time and, and you guys reflected in your pages and fortune when I've spoken to you, um I think that we're looking at this in the wrong way. I think de I became weaponized, it became political, it became uh emotional, it was designed, I think emotionally and I think whenever you make an emotional decision, it's the wrong one. I like the math and inclusive economics, which is my approach is just neutral. It's, it's just math, it's emerging markets. So do you want, uh how does, how does hockey league, how does, how do you find professional hockey players in Canada? They, they farm club from elementary school. How do we find professional football players and baseball players and basketball players? Here we farm club in the middle school. Where are the future capitalists? How we farm clubbing, business leaders, entrepreneurs, real estate, people, professionals. We, we don't, we just leave it to chance unless you go to a private school, unless you come from a wealthy family. In which case, you're talking about that at the dinner table or you got an internship in your dad's business. Uh So we need to create a farm club system. K through college. I've gotten a bank account for every kindergarten kid at Atlanta public schools, the hope Child savings account and studies have shown that if a kid has a bank account in elementary school in kindergarten, they're 50% more likely to go to college. Hold on. If that same kid has money in that account, 50 bucks, they're 75% more likely to graduate from college because you're connecting education with aspiration. So if you connect a account at, at, at kindergarten, which everybody can, I think everybody would love that idea. Financial literacy, uh, get your professionals to go and volunteer in schools where, where they're white, poor, rural or they're mixed race, uh you know, middle class or whether they're black and brown urban doesn't matter. And now you put internships from those schools, apprenticeships from those, those schools hiring from those schools, you're going to reflect America, you're going to find best talents. You're going to find the Steve Jobs and the Sam Altman's and the Oprah Winfrey. So wherever your hero sho is, you're going to find them all over America. There's genius everywhere. Now, I want to come to the audience in a second for of questions, but really fast before I do that, you mentioned the A I Ethics Council that you founded with Open A I CEO Sam Altman. Um You had your inaugural meeting in July, what was the biggest issue that you identified that you think needs to be addressed? First of all, it terrified me. Um The first meeting I had with Sam. Well, I mean, everything is gonna change. I mean, we have not had this since uh since 19, since 1850 1850 to 1910, you went from the horse and buggy to the automobile, right? And the same debate was happening in that 60 year period. All we don't, everything was horses, uh agriculture, transportation, class structures, wealth. It was all about horses. By 1910, the most valuable thing you could do with a horse was create glue and I'm not, I mean, no, no offense to the horse or horse lovers. But that was the fact in 1910, in 1919 10, there were 100 automobile manufacturers. And then you had Henry Ford, uh and his great, great grandsons on my board. Now, yet Henry Ford who created a AAA middle class by paying the workers enough to buy the automobiles. They were making everything changed. We're at this inflection point again, but it's gonna be six years, not 60. And, and you've got to reimagine everything because it's happening while I came from the airport last night. All the, the fast food restaurants, the convenience stores, it's all a pad. It's, it's, it's already happening. You're already punching in your order. You, you don't notice it but it's, it's sort of, you go to CV S or go to your grocery store. It's a self checkout line with one person overseeing it and all the checkout counters are gone. If you have a high school education, no aspiration and no education, you're, you, you got a real problem in America in the next 10 or 15 years. So we, we have got a, I think I can't, I can't. This topic is overwhelms me. I'm, I'm terrified by it and excited about it because we, we're gonna, we're gonna possibly cure cancer in 10 years. So, but half of all jobs for Black America as an example. And underserved America. Poor white who poof gone. If you, if you of all you have is a high school education, you're gone. But there's gonna be new jobs created by the way, accountants problem for them, lawyers problem. Anything that can be automated. So if this is a, this is changing everything all at once and you combine but, but we can equip our Children with financial literacy and A I literacy and I'm gonna be doing a pilot in Atlanta which I announced next month in my, in my hope global form uh with, with A I Ethics Council with Sam Almonds co sharing it. We're gonna create a farm club system in Atlanta from college, from, from kindergarten all the way through college uh to farm glove. The next generation of A I learners, innovators, app creators, inventors. And uh yeah, the the future that is the future and I wanna save time for one audience question. I think we have time for. Does anyone have one? They wanna to ask? OK. No one's courageous, no one's courageous. And that's OK, John, because I I have many more I can ask you. So my last one for you is by the way, this, that, that didn't surprise me. This issue of diversity and all this, it's hard to talk about. And I think that what leads to my next question is that I think a lot of companies feel that they've seen the legal challenges that other companies have faced through and they've implemented de I or inclusive economics. Should companies be be fearful of legal challenges? And what do you tell business leaders that are scared? You should be, you should be fearful of failure. You should be, feel fearful that you don't have enough customers. You should be fearful that you don't have enough employees. You should be fearful that you, that you don't meet your stock, your stock market and your stock, uh, and your, your price targets and your income, what you've told Wall Street quarter to quarter that you're going to hit. You can my rich, I'll say it again. My rich friends need. My poor friends would do better if only to stay rich. This is not even a debate. And II, I had a private debate with, with, uh, Bill Ackman about this and I can't say what happened in the conversation. I'll just say that I had receipts and he didn't. And when I asked him what, what was behind it, he couldn't answer it. But when I asked him, do you, do you have a business plan for America? Other than the one that I presented, he couldn't answer that too. In fact, he said he sort of agreed with me, but he wouldn't say that publicly. I say to anybody if you, if you don't like, forget de and I put that aside the terms did, if, if, if you have a business plan that's different from diversity and different from demographics, please present it. I, I mean, I'm not, to me this is not complicated. You can't fight demographic changes. Demographics are destiny and we're going. And if you look at the, the most, the most successful markets in America, what are the two biggest economies? California and New York. What are the two most diverse places in America? California, New York. What's the biggest economy in the traditional South Atlanta? What's the big, what's the most diverse place in the traditional South Atlanta? Atlanta is the 10th large economy in the United States of America, busiest airport in the world. Uh $450 billion a year in GDP. But we fought over who got the contract and who went to a AAA lunch counter who got into a room or all this other silly stuff that was been people in fighting over for 100 years and we're still arguing over silly things about race and position again. Unless we want to be speaking Mandarin in 20 years. No disrespect. I love, I love the world. I love China. I've been there many times. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying, unless you want to be speaking Mandarin or Russian in 20 years, we gotta stop arguing with each other. Everybody wants to, everybody wants to be an American but Americans and that we've got to figure out whether we are better together. Can I get an Amen? And that is the perfect way to end it. So, thank you so much. Don I appreciate you being here with me today. Thank you. Thank you.