E-mail a friendAlden McDonald
airdate October 19, 2005
In '72, at age 29, Alden McDonald became CEO of New Orleans' Liberty Bank & Trust, a start-up headquartered in a trailer lot. In '05, Liberty was one of the largest African American-owned financial institutions in the U.S. He worked his way through school and began his career as a part-timer at a local bank. A commissioner of the Bring New Orleans Back Fund, McDonald has helped lead the post-Katrina rebuilding effort by example and, in '06, was named to Fortune magazine's "Portraits of Power" list.
Alden McDonald
Tavis: Alden McDonald is the President and CEO of the Liberty Bank and Trust Company of New Orleans. In addition to being the largest black-owned bank in the city, Liberty Bank is one of the most successful African American-owned banks in the entire country. Recently Mayor Ray Nagin appointed Alden McDonald to his 'Bring Back New Orleans' commission. He joins us tonight from his temporary headquarters in Baton Rouge. Alden McDonald, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Alden McDonald: Well, thanks for having me.
Tavis: Glad to have you. I know a lot of folk have been reading about Liberty Bank if you happen to be a reader of the 'New York Times.' The 'New York Times" has been following the getting back online, shall we say, of this particular bank, Liberty Bank. So they've done a two or three, four part series in the 'New York Times' about Liberty Bank specifically, which I've enjoyed reading. Alden, tell me, how are things going at the moment with getting Liberty Bank back online?
McDonald: Well, it's been a pretty - challenging piece for us down here. But we're rocking along pretty good, and I think we're making plenty of progress. As you said, the 'New York Times" has been writing a few things about us. We were hit pretty hard with the storm, with the hurricane, and as a result of that, we have to rebuild from scratch. And we have a team of employees, a team of staff people that's second to none.
And as a result of their leadership, we're moving along quite well and back up and running. As you know, we have five branches outside of the city that are still operating. The eight branches inside of the city took some pretty hard damage. We lost six out of the eight branches in the city. We have two that we're trying to get up today as we speak. One opened at the beginning of this week and hopefully we'll have the other one in the city opened at the end of this week.
Tavis: How does the bank survive when six of your eight branches in your main service area have been hit? How - do you guys even stay in business when you've got six out of your eight institutions that are literally under water?
McDonald: Well, I tell people all the time when you're poor and when you've been poor and when you're still poor, you learn how to survive in all different types of situations.
Tavis: Absolutely.
McDonald: But we have, as I mentioned, a great group of individuals who have come together to put this thing back together. The catastrophe moved a lot of our customer base outside of New Orleans. A good portion of our customer base was in the flooded area of New Orleans. So we have people all over the country. And as we sit and answer the telephones, we're helping those individuals get their lives back together.
We're making them loans, we're making sure that they have what they need in order to get on with their life. But it's going to be a hard road forward for most of the citizens of New Orleans, and particularly, the gentilian New Orleans, east and lower ninth ward. So we're trying to play a very, very important part with our customer base, because this is when they need us the most.
Tavis: I assume, and I could be wrong, but I assume, given what this hurricane has done to your city, that while Liberty Bank is back online, so if you're a customer you can certainly do your banking online. I would assume though that you've got a whole lot of money going out and not a lot of money coming in. You've got withdrawals as opposed to deposits?
McDonald: Well, we had quite a bit of withdrawals to leave out to individuals who perhaps may not relocate back in New Orleans. The individuals left there without jobs, so they are withdrawing their money in order to live and move their quality of life in the new communities where they are. However, we're asking and we've asked a lot of our friends from around the country to help us to replace those deposits of individuals who left us. Those deposits will be used to help the people in the city to rebuild our city.
And we're doing pretty well with that. We've had a lot of friends from around the country, Earl Graves with Black Enterprise has been very, very helpful in putting teams of individuals together. We have people on the west coast, people in the north. So we've had a lot of people from around the country that's assisting us and getting us back in play.
We're also talking to Wal-Mart, believe it or not, to see whether or not they could assist in letting us move into a couple of their stores so that we can have some locations where some of our customer base moved to. So we're doing a lot of different things in order to make sure that we help the people who lost everything to come back and also to keep the bank economically healthy.
Tavis: Give me your sense of, to your earlier point. Let me digress for a second and go back to your earlier point that you made about what it means to be poor. Certainly people of color understand that better than most, what it means to be poor and how to make ends meet, how to take little and turn it into much. I hear your point about that. Tell me, though, with that in mind, whether or not you are hopeful that Liberty Bank will be the strong institution that it once was.
And I raise that obviously against a backdrop of these concerns that people have that New Orleans may not be the city that it once was. Certainly may not be as black as it once was. And if you're a black institution and the city does not get rebuilt with the number of black folk living there that used to inhabit it, you might be not the same bank you once were. Any concerns or fears about that at all, Alden?
McDonald: Well, our bank may be a little different than what it was simply because we have a new customer base. I have no concerns as to whether or not we'll be strong going forward in the future, because what we have to do is just change the business model that we have. And we're in the process of changing the business model now to help us not only remain strong, but to remain - for us to remain to be a focal point and a focus for economic development for the African American community in the rebuilding process.
We think it's very, very important for the rebuilding that's going to take place in New Orleans to be very inclusive of the African American community. So perhaps we've lost some of the population, but I'm sure we'll have some population to come back in, because there will be opportunity to grow in the city. You're starting off with a clean slate. So you have an opportunity to help design what you want the economy to look like and be like and what the city would look like. So I think we have a great opportunity to be part of the rebuilding process which should provide great opportunity for people to grow economically as well.
Tavis: Before I move on to that particular point you've just raised now in terms of how we rebuild the city of New Orleans and what specifically you're going to do as a part of the mayor's commission, and what you're going to tell the mayor, with regard to how the city how to be rebuilt. Let me ask a quick personal question if I might. Did you lose your home?
McDonald: Lost my home. Matter of fact, my wife and I just finished talking about what we're going to do and what we may do moving forward. We're temporarily located here in Baton Rouge. My wife is still in Atlanta, Georgia with some friends and they've been quite helpful and quite supportive. I left home with two pairs of shorts and one pair of long pants. I had to go out and buy some clothes, and we've lost everything in the floodwaters.
Tavis: To that point, what are you going to say to the mayor as a part of this commission? What are your primary concerns about what - needs to be considered in rebuilding New Orleans?
McDonald: Well, I think the foremost important thing is that we have to have a good balance of people in the city. We have to think in terms of the economy, what type of economy we would like to grow. We have an opportunity to go out and maybe get a new type of economy to come in, with certainly the involvement of the African American community in any type of rebuilding, any type of growth that's going to take place in the city. It must be inclusive of the African American community.
Tavis: Let me ask you what your sense is. - This may be a little bit of an uncomfortable question, forgive me for it. But I only raise it because you're a stalwart in that New Orleans community. As I travel around the country, and have run into folk from New Orleans, all across the south, there's some folk who think Mayor Nagin did a wonderful job, did the best he could in the circumstances.
Others who were disappointed. And of course, you've seen the criticisms that I've seen of the mayor and local government for not being prepared. What's your sense of what the mayor did or didn't do in this situation, even though you're on his commission now?
McDonald: (laughs) Well, I think, first of all, we have to put things in context. This is a catastrophe. This is something that hasn't happened before in the history of our country. And obviously, you can't plan for things that you don't know will happen. I think he did a fairly decent job in pulling a lot of things together in a short period of time. One thing in particular.
The streets were cleaned of the debris in a very short period of time. Whether or not the communication took place was a whole 'nother piece. When you have a city where you've lost the entire school system, where you've lost thousands and thousands of jobs, where you had to evacuate 95% of your citizens, I mean, that's a tough job for anyone to handle. So there will be critics. But for the most part, I think he's our leader and we must move forward with it.
Tavis: I hate to cut you off, I'm about to lose that satellite feed, though, from Baton Rouge. Thank you for coming on and nice to talk to you. We'll do it again, to keep checking in on you, see how Liberty Bank is coming along.
McDonald: Thanks, Tavis.
Tavis: Thank you, Alden, all the best to you. Up next on this program, Oscar nominated actress Patricia Clarkson, busy woman here. Stay with us.
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