Hope_office_with_lavetta_willis_002Yes, you heard that right. This Friday the world headquarters for Operation HOPE received a special visitor, in the name of my new friend Lavetta Willis, CEO of LL International Shoe Company and DADA Footwear.  We originally met at an awards ceremony hosted by our friend Pat Means of Turning Point Communications, who gave us both a History Makers Award earlier this year, and we became fast friends.

Lavetta, a former star college athlete AND engineering major, is now a brilliant and successful CEO of a growing company, and she also has a heart for giving back, or "doing well by doing good," as I like to say. She has grown, on her own, a multi-million dollar company, been highlighted and written up by the media nationally and even internationally, and now she is poised to take her business to the next level (see a story from me tomorrow on her newest brilliant creation).

Hope_office_with_lavetta_willis_003Lavetta and I have agreed to team up together to bring hope and dignity to urban, inner-city youth in the months to come, going into inner-city schools, along with other success stories that look like us, to show and tell our youth that they can go, do and become anything that they genuinely dream of, and are willing to work hard for. You GO Lavetta Willis. I am with you.

Check out a great story written about the American Dream called Lavetta Willis, here.

Let me know what you think. Spread the word.

Onward with HOPE,

John Hope Bryant

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