Bill Bynum

Bill Bynum is Chief Executive Officer of HOPE, a credit union (Hope Credit Union), loan fund (Hope Enterprise Corporation) and policy center (Hope Policy Institute) dedicated to improving lives in one of the nation’s most persistently impoverished regions. Since 1994 HOPE has provided financial services, leveraged private and public resources, and shaped policies that have benefited more than 650,000 residents in the Delta and other distressed parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

For more than three decades, Bynum has worked to advance economic opportunity for disenfranchised populations. He began his professional career by helping to establish Self-Help, a pioneer in the development finance industry, and later built nationally recognized programs at the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center. A recipient of the Aspen Global Leadership Network John P. McNulty Prize and the University of North Carolina Distinguished Alumnus Award, Bill has advised Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama on financial service matters, and served ten years as Chairman of Treasury’s Community Development Advisory Board. He currently chairs the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board and is a member of the US Partnership for Mobility from Poverty, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Other board service includes NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Aspen Institute, Corporation for Enterprise Development, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Fannie Mae Affordable Housing Advisory Council, Mississippi Children’s Museum, the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation and Millsaps College.

Other honors include the Ernst & Young/Kauffman Foundation National Entrepreneur of the Year, Credit Union National Association Wegner Award, Gramlich Award for Responsible Finance, National Rural Assembly Rural Hero, and National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions Annie Vamper Award.