John Hope Bryant is a philanthropic entrepreneur and businessman, in the business of empowerment. This includes Mr. Bryant’s non-profit work throughout the United States, through Operation HOPE, his global non-profit work led by HOPE Global Initiatives, his vast work in public policy, and his increasing portfolio in “thought leadership.”
On January 22nd, 2008, Mr. Bryant was appointed by then President George W. Bush as vice-chairman of the bi-partisan U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy. Vice chairman until January, 2010, Mr. Bryant proudly now serves the historic presidency of the Honorable Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States. In this role Mr. Bryant also serves as chairman of the Under-Served Committee for the U.S. President’s Council. Seeing this crisis in global dimensions, Mr. Bryant also serves on the Global Agenda Council for the World Economic Forum, as an advisor on financial literacy and financial empowerment.
Mr. Bryant is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Operation HOPE, America’s first non-profit social investment banking organization, now operating in 68 U.S. communities and South Africa, having raised more than $500 million from the private sector to empower the poor.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton described Mr. Bryant in his recent bestselling book GIVING saying, “John Bryant is a 41 year-old whirlwind of ideas and action. Lean, intense, focused, and completely positive in his belief in the potential of poor people to prosper, with ‘a hand up and not a hand out.’”
A national community leader cited by the past four sitting U.S. presidents for his work to empower low-wealth communities across America, and an active advisor to the past two U.S. presidents, John Hope Bryant is one of the most authoritative and compelling advocates for poverty eradication in America today.
Raised in Compton and South Central Los Angeles, California and homeless for 6 months of his life by age 18, John Hope Bryant is today a businessman and social entrepreneur who has traveled the world tirelessly promoting a sense of hope, self-esteem, dignity, and opportunity for the under-served.
As a co-founder of Global Dignity, John Hope Bryant has conducted Dignity Day teaching sessions with youth and leaders in Canada, Turkey, India, Switzerland, Finland, South Africa and Amman, Jordan with Her Majesty Queen Rania, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, amongst other countries.
John Hope Bryant is also a businessman, has served on several corporate boards, is author of BANKING ON OUR FUTURE, a book on youth and family financial literacy, is a former goodwill ambassador to the U.S. for the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, a partner with former U.S. President Clinton and his foundation in teaching financial literacy and promoting the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), was selected as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum, and working with HOPE global spokesman Ambassador Andrew Young, is also a leader for a new movement bridging civil rights to silver rights. Mr. Bryant is an internationally respected public speaker.
John Hope Bryant has received more than 400 awards and citations for his work to empower low-wealth communities including the Use Your Life Award by Oprah Winfrey, and was named a “Community Hero” by People Magazine on the 10th anniversary of the worst urban civil unrest in U.S. history. In December, 1994, Mr. Bryant was selected by TIME Magazine for their “America’s 50 Most Promising Leaders of the Future” cover story.
Based in Geneva, AIM was established in cooperation with corporate and civil society partners to enable the private sector to act directly and effectively on the major economic, social and humanitarian challenges of human mobility. Manpower Inc. and WISeKey, two of AIM's founding partners, have played a lead role in the Labour Mobility Index launched at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos. The Labor Mobility Index will allow governments and private sector companies to monitor progress on labor mobility policy and practice via the Internet. The Index will include an analysis of legislation, regulation, institutional behavior, openness of markets to foreign workers, services provided to them and measures for their integration, permanent or temporary.
Manpower has sponsored Oxford Analytica as designer of the methodology and evaluation processes required to prepare and publish the Labor Mobility Index. The Labor Mobility Index will be a powerful tool in advancing AIM's vision of an open, efficient, fair and sustainable system of human mobility worldwide, said AIM Co-Chair Brunson McKinley.
The Association for International Mobility (AIM) advocates on behalf of a more open and flexible international labor mobility; encourages commercially viable services to foreign workers and the communities they live in, especially through use of mobility technology; and serves as a point of reference and assistance for civil society groups working in the field of human mobility.
Manpower has long recognized this as an area that can be much improved in order to facilitate global mobility, said David Arkless, President of Global Corporate and Government Affairs, Manpower Inc. Our partnership with AIM will allow us to bring to market unique ways of looking at this trend based on the strengths of our organizations.
WISeKey eSecurity technologies will enable AIM to activate the Labor Mobility Index over the Internet and monitor it securely from anywhere in the world said Carlos Moreira, CEO, WISekey. In all its work, AIM seeks to reinforce the influence and capacity of other actors in international human mobility - individuals, businesses, civil society, organizations, governments and local authorities - and will emphasize the humanitarian dimension of international mobility.
AIM operates as a non-profit association under by-laws approved by the Swiss government. Its members are corporations and associations with strategic interests in human mobility as well as distinguished international experts in the field.