JPMorgan Chase & Co. Employees to Volunteer Skills and Expertise to New Orleans’ Nonprofits
Top-performing employees from around the world will provide on-the-ground expertise to help disadvantaged youth, fostering entrepreneurship and creating economic development opportunities
New Orleans, May 9, 2016 /3BL Media/ – JPMorgan Chase & Co. today announced that a team of its top employees will travel to New Orleans to help strengthen the city’s nonprofit community. These employees from around the globe will utilize their business skills and expertise to help select nonprofit organizations increase capacity, create economic opportunity and encourage more widely shared prosperity in the city.
Building on JPMorgan Chase’s 180-year history and deep commitment in New Orleans,
the New Orleans Service Corps will spend the first three weeks of May on the ground helping four New Orleans nonprofit organizations increase their impact in supporting disadvantaged youth, fostering entrepreneurship and creating economic development opportunities. Specifically, JPMorgan Chase employees will be supporting critical projects at EMPLOY, New Orleans BioInnovation Center, New Orleans Business Alliance and Liberty’s Kitchen.
“Our employees are the greatest resource we have to help create change and drive economic opportunity,” said Steve Cutler, Vice Chairman, JPMorgan Chase. “This group of 16 employees from around the globe will put their skills to the test helping our nonprofit partners expand their impact in New Orleans. It’s not just New Orleans that will benefit from their expertise; our employees will be building leadership skills while making a significant difference in the community.”
The New Orleans Service Corps is made up of 16 JPMorgan Chase employees from across lines of business and locations around the world, including Hong Kong, London, California, Delaware, New York, New Jersey and Ohio. Together, the team has more than 100 years of work experience at JPMorgan Chase within the firm’s Asset Management, Corporate and Investment, Community and Consumer Banking, Legal and Corporate Finance groups.
“A spirit of service and volunteerism continues to transform the City of New Orleans,” said New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. “I’m excited that JPMorgan Chase employees from around the world are coming to help New Orleans build back better than before and increase access to economic opportunity.”
The New Orleans Service Corps builds off the success of JPMorgan Chase’s Detroit Service Corps, which is helping nonprofits that commit to the city’s economic recovery. In New Orleans, employees will work in teams of four, based on a skills match for each nonprofit’s objectives. The New Orleans Service Corps will work with the nonprofits on the projects detailed below.
EMPLOY: The team will create a strategic plan to encourage New Orleans employers to hire disadvantaged young people. The plan will be used by EMPLOY’s collaborative of 20 different local organizations to improve the pipeline of young people who are seeking job opportunities.
“The JPMorgan Chase team will help us create a coordinated and targeted employer engagement strategy to serve opportunity youth in New Orleans,” said Amanda Kruger Hill, Executive Director, Cowen Institute. “This is well-timed, as it occurs while the EMPLOY team determines an appropriate soft skills assessment tool vetted with employers.”
BioInnovation Center: The team will help the BioInnovation Center develop strategies to attract and retain entrepreneurs, research firms and laboratories in New Orleans focused on the creation of life-saving technologies.
“As the life science industry in Louisiana emerges, our clients are beginning to require a wider range of support and we will need to adapt to meet those needs,” said Aaron Miscenich, President, New Orleans BioInnovation Center, Inc. “Our strategic planning process can now include the great talent supplied by the JPMorgan Chase Service Corps to help our entrepreneurs bring their life-changing technologies to the benefit of us all.”
New Orleans Business Alliance: The Service Corps will work with the Business Alliance to analyze best practices and provide recommendations for creating economic development incentives that make New Orleans an ideal intersection of commerce and culture.
“JPMorgan Chase Service Corps will help us enhance the incentive evaluation process for developers, the City of New Orleans and NOLABA,” said Quentin L. Messer, Jr., President & CEO, New Orleans Business Alliance. “The Service Corps affords NOLABA and our partners at the City with a unique opportunity to have JPMorgan Chase lend their expertise to our efforts to foster prudent development throughout the city, thus providing on-ramps to economic opportunity for more New Orleanians.”
Liberty’s Kitchen: Employees will develop a financial analysis of Liberty’s Kitchen’s food procurement process to identify cost efficiencies, while helping the organization continue to provide young people who work there with a path to bright and healthy futures through employability and life skills training.
“Liberty’s Kitchen invests in the potential of young people to create and achieve their vision of success,” said David M. Emond, Executive Director, Liberty’s Kitchen. “The JPMorgan Chase Service Corps will help illuminate a road map toward greater efficiency across all of our foodservice business channels, increasing our capacity to impact the lives of vulnerable New Orleans youth. We are excited to put the team’s recommendations into action this summer.”
Established in 2014, JPMorgan Chase’s Service Corps has provided skills-based employee volunteerism efforts in Detroit, Michigan, Mumbai, India and Johannesburg, South Africa. Insights from each of these Service Corps have informed the work taking place in New Orleans this month. Since 2005, JPMorgan Chase has provided $36 million in philanthropic support to create economic opportunity by improving workforce training programs and small business growth in Louisiana. The firm has also lent or invested over $400 million towards affordable housing in the city and to build grocery stores, hospitals and daycare facilities in the state.
About JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) is a leading global financial services firm with assets of $2.4 trillion and operations worldwide. The Firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transaction processing, and asset management. A component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, JPMorgan Chase & Co. serves millions of consumers in the United States and many of the world's most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients under its J.P. Morgan and Chase brands. Information about JPMorgan Chase & Co. is available at www.jpmorganchase.com.
