On Monday, October 19, John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE, joined Michael Milken at the University of Southern California for a fireside chat on finance solutions to societal challenges and expanding economic mobility.
The conversation was part of Building Prosperity: Human Capital, Institutions, and Finance, the USC Marshall School of Business course Milken is teaching this fall with Professor Tom Y. Chang. About 60 MBA candidates and top undergraduates take the class, which met in Fertitta Hall on the University Park campus.
The questions at the center of Milken’s course are ones John has spent his career answering in practice: what it means for a person or a society to prosper, and how to create the conditions for more people to do so.
The setting made the conversation personal. USC sits in South Central Los Angeles, the community where Operation HOPE was born after the civil unrest of 1992. Today HOPE is the nation’s largest provider of financial literacy and inclusive economics services, having served more than 4 million people and directed more than $5 billion in economic activity into underserved communities.
John and Milken’s partnership runs deep. Milken wrote a foreword to John’s bestselling book, Capitalism for All: Inclusive Economics and the Future-Proofing of America, and John is a founding member of the Milken Institute’s Economic Mobility Alliance.
The Capitalism for All tour continues Thursday, October 22, at the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream in Washington, DC, where John will be in conversation with journalist Jonathan Capehart. The HOPE Global Forum follows December 1 to 3 at the Signia by Hilton Atlanta.
