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For more than 50 years, OneUnited Bank has operated on the belief that financial empowerment in Black communities requires more than products and services\u2014it requires confronting the systems that keep wealth out of reach. Now, the nation\u2019s largest Black-owned bank is extending that mission into addressing how to close the racial wealth gap.<\/p>\n
On May 5, OneUnited launches\u00a0Who\u2019s Your Ma Honey?<\/em>, a 10-episode podcast and video series that the Boston-based bank frames as both a cultural reckoning and a direct extension of its community development work. The show streams on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible, and invites high-profile guests to surface buried experiences of shame\u2014then reframe them as the origin story of their resilience and success.<\/p>\n The concept lands with particular weight coming from OneUnited. The bank, a designated Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), has financed nearly $1 billion in loans\u2014the majority in low-to-moderate income communities like South Central, Compton, Liberty City, and Roxbury. Its mission has always been explicit: close the racial wealth gap, one transaction at a time.\u00a0Who\u2019s Your Ma Honey?<\/em>\u00a0argues that closing it also means addressing what happens in people\u2019s heads before they ever walk into a bank.<\/p>\n \u201cUndeserved shame is the silent barrier that impedes personal growth and financial empowerment,\u201d the bank said in announcing the show, a framing that ties the psychological directly to the economic.<\/p>\n The show is co-hosted by\u00a0Teri Williams, OneUnited\u2019s President and COO, and\u00a0Suzan McDowell, President and CEO of Circle of One Marketing, a Miami-based multicultural agency. Williams\u2019 story is the show\u2019s central proof of concept, and it\u2019s one she first shared publicly with\u00a0Fortune<\/em>. She grew up in Indiantown, Florida, before earning a full scholarship to Brown University and later for a Harvard MBA, and in navigating that distance, she slowly buried the memory of her great-grandmother, Annie Coachman, known as Ma Honey.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reaction to the story was overwhelming,\u201d Williams told Fortune<\/em>. There were people from Indiantown who remembered \u201cMiss Honey,\u201d but others related to members from their own past. \u201cMy \u2018ah ha\u2019 moment for deciding to create a show came when I shared the story with a group of women leaders at the\u00a0Next\u00a0Narrative Summit\u00a0in 2025 and they all had an \u2018ah ha\u2019 moment and then shared their powerful Ma Honey stories.\u201d She said people are used to answering the question of who inspired you, but this question of \u201cWho\u2019s your Ma Honey?\u201d made them reflect, with their answers surprising even themselves.<\/p>\n Ma Honey was an entrepreneur: she owned a penny candy store, a juke joint, a BBQ pit, and rental properties in the segregated South, generations before those opportunities were supposed to be available to women who looked like her. When Williams opened up to\u00a0Fortune<\/em>\u00a0about that buried chapter of her life, it marked the first time she had spoken about Ma Honey publicly, a disclosure that ultimately became the seed of the show itself.<\/p>\n Williams said that when she began in financial services in the early 80\u2019s, it was one of the least diverse industries. Her decision to acquire four Black-owned banks\u2014all started in the 1960s when segregation prevented Black people from accessing other banks\u2014and rolling them into one, changing the name to OneUnited Bank, reflects what she called \u201cthe community builder in me, which was greatly influenced by Ma Honey.\u201d<\/p>\n Season One\u2019s guest lineup underscores the show\u2019s ambitions. It includes\u00a0Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin;\u00a0Marc Morial, President of the National Urban League;\u00a0Congresswoman Frederica Wilson;\u00a0Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava;\u00a0Sheena Meade, CEO of The Clean Slate Initiative; and\u00a0Felicia Hatcher, CEO of Pharrell Williams\u2019 Black Ambition Prize, among others.<\/p>\n \u201cShame can completely derail people from achieving financial success,\u201d Williams said, because it can stop them from asking questions to become more financially savvy, or it can reduce their expectations of what they can accomplish. \u201cThey feel they do not deserve to succeed. I hope we can make the feeling of shame taboo.\u201d<\/p>\n For OneUnited, the show is a bet that the path to generational wealth runs not just through financial literacy, but through the stories people have been taught to be ashamed of. Ma Honey\u2014a Black woman building business equity in the Jim Crow South\u2014was always the blueprint. The bank wants her descendants to stop forgetting it.<\/p>\n Who\u2019s Your Ma Honey?<\/em>\u00a0premieres May 5, 2026, at www.oneunited.com\/honey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Exclusive #Americas #largest #Blackowned #bank #launches #podcast #mission #unlock #hidden #shame #holding #generational #wealth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For more than 50 years, OneUnited Bank has operated on the belief that financial empowerment in Black communities requires more than products and services\u2014it requires confronting the systems that keep… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[847,200,342,1209,562,1216,1213,1215,1208,61,1211,1210,1207,1214,1212,81],"class_list":["post-854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-americas","tag-bank","tag-banks","tag-blackowned","tag-exclusive","tag-generational","tag-hidden","tag-holding","tag-largest","tag-launches","tag-mission","tag-podcast","tag-podcasts","tag-shame","tag-unlock","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}