30 years ago this past May 5th, 2022, Operation HOPE was founded in South Central Los Angeles, California. This month I am proud to share than we have hit the 200th HOPE Inside location nationwide.
Our plan call for 1,000 locations, and the embedding of the model into the American banking system itself. In 2016, the HOPE Inside model of Operation HOPE was recognized with the ‘Innovator of the Year’ Award by the American Banker.
In 2014, Operation HOPE launched its first hybrid model for HOPE Inside, based on our HOPE Inside at Bank of the West in Oakland, California.
Our first big wave of programmatic growth for the HOPE Inside model came when Truist, then called Sun Trust Bank, announced a major commitment to integrating our work into their branch network.
Most recently, led by its visionary CEO and my friend Bill Rogers, Truist committed to standing up our HOPE Inside model against appropriately half of their entire branch network. Today, Donta’ Wilson, the bank’s chief retail and small business banking officer, continues to push this innovative and important work forward.
Additional and important expansion of the network and model came when my friend Bryan Jordan, CEO of First Horizon Bank, committed to integrating HOPE Inside into 10% of all of his bank branches, which he did.
Soon thereafter, Regions Bank also made an important commitment to embed our model into their branch network.
Then came US Bank, led by excellent banker Tim Welsh, vice chairman, and their commitment to the model.
And our push into the workplace received important commitments from Pete Stavros of KKR, for some of his portfolio companies, and UPS for employees of their headquarter office, and then a major commitment from Delta Airlines, led by their visionary CEO Ed Bastian, and their global human resource officer Joanne Smith, amongst others there.
Delta Airlines committed to embed the model throughout all of their offices across the country. Many success stories then followed, from each of these partners — and others not mentioned here.
Most recently, Wells Fargo — our first money center bank to make a HOPE Inside commitment — committed to start with 20 HOPE Inside locations, with a commitment to expand to over 100 locations.
And then came an innovative commitment from Bank of America, with additional details to come there.
We believe that the best is yet to come.
John Hope Bryant, founder, Operation HOPE