October 8, 2025
Williams’s work is deeply private, stemming from her perception that everybody can management their very own financial future.
In 1995, Teri Williams launched into a mission that may reshape her profession and affect communities throughout the nation. Alongside together with her companion, Kevin Cohee, she acquired her first financial institution, step one in a journey to construct a strong establishment devoted to empowering Black People.
At the moment, as president and chief working officer of OneUnited Financial institution, the most important Black-owned financial institution in the US, Williams has helped finance almost $1 billion in loans for low- to moderate-income communities, together with Los Angeles’ South Central and Compton, in addition to Liberty Metropolis in Miami.
Williams’s work is deeply private, stemming from her perception that everybody can management their very own financial future. She has stated her great-grandmother, an entrepreneur who owned a number of companies in a segregated Florida city, helped encourage her lifelong mission.
“The work I do now’s significant to me,” she instructed her alma mater, Brown College, earlier this 12 months, “as a result of we’re serving to to make monetary literacy a core worth, significantly in Black communities.”
Her journey to OneUnited started within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, when she left a profitable profession at American Categorical, the place she was the youngest-ever vp. A household pal instructed her of the Boston Financial institution of Commerce’s want for brand spanking new management, and he or she noticed a chance to make use of her company expertise to serve her group. Over the following a number of years, she and her companion would buy three extra Black-owned banks, finally consolidating them into the unified, nationwide model recognized right this moment as OneUnited.
The transfer was a response to a long-standing want. The Boston Financial institution of Commerce, based in 1962, had served as a significant haven for Black people turned away from different monetary establishments.
By consolidating these banks, Williams and her crew created a robust entity with a valuation of $700 million and a buyer base of roughly 100,000, with 80% of shoppers being Black. The financial institution’s mission is to assist shut the racial wealth hole, a staggering disparity {that a} 2024 Federal Reserve research estimated at $240,000 between the median Black and white family.
To serve this group, the financial institution has pioneered revolutionary merchandise designed to offer monetary entry the place others have failed.
As an example, the “Second Likelihood” checking account serves people who’ve been shut out of different establishments as a consequence of a adverse banking historical past. On the similar time, a secured bank card helps clients rebuild their credit score.
The “Money, Please,” short-term mortgage program was created to supply a safer, extra reasonably priced various to predatory check-cashing shops, which might cost rates of interest as excessive as 400%. The financial institution has additionally adopted know-how, launching an AI software to assist clients make smarter monetary choices, a function that, in line with Williams, has been “a giant hit for us.”
Her standard “Teri Talks” on OneUnited’s official Instagram account supplies clients and followers with up-close and private entry to info and instruments to reinforce their monetary well being.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DMa-rr8BoWQ/?hl=en
Williams’ affect extends past OneUnited. She is the founding father of the Black Financial Council of Massachusetts and serves on the board of CCC Clever Options and the Boston Basis Racial Wealth Hole Partnership.
She is also the writer of I Bought Financial institution! What My Granddad Taught Me About Cash, a monetary literacy e book for younger folks.
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