![]() She spent two years at Bank of America post-college, and then got her MBA at Harvard, graduating in the top 10% of her class.ĬEO Kevin Cohee and president and COO Teri Williams, of OneUnited Bank Courtesy of OneUnited Bank Williams earned her undergraduate degree with distinction in economics from Brown University. ![]() “She was my role model I felt the power of her presence and, to this day, she’s a reflection of who I am,” she says of those formative years. She often followed her entrepreneur great-grandmother, who owned several businesses around town, watching her run them. “He told me,” Cohee remembers, “we have enough brothers protesting in these streets we need some young brothers like you to own institutions like banks.” Cohee says of the experience, “They literally set this vision in my head to own a bank, and I spent my life playing that vision out.”ĭuring that period, Williams lived in the Black community in Indiantown, Florida, where her family has spent four generations. Around the same time in 1966, when Hayden was developing the Unity Bank concept at Harvard, Cohee remembers his uncles, who were civil rights activists in his native Kansas City, taking the then 4-year-old to Black Panther meetings.Ī remark made by one of his uncles’ friends during one meeting would guide his life. Today, as OneUnited Bank, it comprises three brick-and-mortar branches and, they say, the most expansive online presence of any Black business in America.īut what makes the bank unique is that-from branding to banking services-it has developed a bold commitment to identifying and operating as an activist bank, what Williams calls, “a bank for Black America.” Destined to Build Black WealthĬohee, CEO and chair, and Williams, president and COO, knew early in life that they wanted finance careers. It also sought and got commercial accounts from the City of Boston.įast forward to 1995: Husband and wife banking duo, Kevin Cohee and Teri Williams, bought what was by then a Unity Bank successor, the struggling Boston Bank of Commerce. Its slogan was and remains, “The Bank with a Purpose.”īut its officers committed to a multiracial endeavor, encouraging whites nationwide to open bank accounts by mail to support the institution, becoming the first Black bank with a national presence. Bernard Fulp, an experienced banker, opened Unity Bank & Trust Company as its first officers in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in June 1968.ĭetermined to honor King, assassinated two months earlier, Unity focused on economic activism in the Black community. ![]() So, real estate investor Sneed, Marvin E. Hayden got drafted into the Vietnam War shortly after graduation. ![]()
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