A New Hope

To boost more talented black executives into the stratosphere of american business, Ariel Investments' Mellody Hobson plans to install them at the top of existing businesses-and connect them with the customers and capital to succeed.

- By Maneet Ahuja and Hank Tucker

AS A SIXTH GRADER IN CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN 1980, MELLODY HOBSON WAS MORTIFIED BY THE SNAGGLETOOTH THAT PROTRUDED WHEN SHE SMILED. IT SIMPLY DIDN'T FIT THE FUTURE SHE ENVISIONED FOR HERSELF.

She asked her friends who wore braces for the name of their orthodontist, and without her mother knowing, made an appointment, walking from school to his office. He said she'd have to wear braces for years and that it would cost $2,500-a monumental sum for Hobson's struggling single mother, who was raising her and her five siblings in a home where money was so tight the electricity was periodically shut off because of unpaid bills. No matter. That tooth was going to be fixed: Hobson and the orthodontist agreed to a payment plan of about $50 per month.

In eighth grade, determined to go to one of Chicago's best private high schools, she asked friends where they were applying, called the schools and arranged to tour them with her mother in tow. She wound up at St. Ignatius College Prep on a scholarship.

In 2020, in the wake of the nationwide George Floyd protests, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon wanted to aid Black businesses. He called Hobson, by then a JPMorgan board member, hoping to tap into that same sheer force of will. "I said, 'We really need a sustainable investment effort-totally for-profit-to invest in minority companies," Dimon recalls. He told her he wanted Ariel Investments, where Hobson is co-CEO and president, involved, then rattled off other minority-owned businesses as potential partners.

Hobson was characteristically blunt but upbeat. "I said to him, Jamie, [some of] these companies are gone,' which he did not know. 'But I think I have an idea." She drafted a four-page memo outlining "Project Black" and emailed it to Dimon on September 8, a week after his initial call.