After decades focused on increasing access to capital in underserved Black communities, OneUnited Bank is turning its attention to a more personal obstacle to economic mobility: shame.
Developing A Wealth Mindset
The nation’s largest Black-owned bank is launching a new podcast and video series, “Who’s Your Ma Honey?” that explores how buried family histories, self-perception, and generational trauma can shape financial confidence and opportunity.
According to the bank, the new 10-episode series, “Who’s Your Ma Honey?,” combines conversations about personal history, identity, and resilience with the bank’s broader mission of closing the racial wealth gap. The show will stream on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible, featuring interviews with public figures who discuss formative experiences that shaped their lives and careers.
The announcement of the podcast was first reported by Fortune.
The project represents an unusual expansion of the bank’s longstanding community development work. Founded more than 50 years ago, OneUnited has positioned itself as both a financial institution and an advocate for economic empowerment in Black communities. As a certified Community Development Financial Institution, or CDFI, the bank says it has financed nearly $1 billion in loans, primarily in low-to-moderate-income neighborhoods including South Central Los Angeles, Compton, Liberty City in Miami, and Roxbury in Boston.
Bank executives say the podcast builds on that mission by examining the psychological impact of poverty, exclusion, and generational trauma.
“Undeserved shame is the silent barrier that impedes personal growth and financial empowerment,” the bank said in announcing the series.
The show is cohosted by Teri Williams, OneUnited’s president and chief operating officer, and Suzan McDowell, president and CEO of Circle of One Marketing, a multicultural marketing agency based in Miami.
Williams first shared the personal story behind the podcast in an exclusive interview with Fortune. She described growing up in Indiantown, Florida, before earning a scholarship to Brown University and later completing an MBA at Harvard University. Along the way, she said, she distanced herself from memories of her great-grandmother Annie Coachman, known in the family as “Ma Honey.”
Williams told Fortune that audience reactions to the story ultimately inspired the podcast. After speaking at the Next Narrative Summit in 2025, she said attendees began reflecting on influential figures from their own lives when asked the question, “Who’s your Ma Honey?”
“The reaction to the story was overwhelming,” Williams told Fortune. “People are used to answering the question of who inspired you, but this question of ‘Who’s your Ma Honey?’ made them reflect.”
Coachman’s story became central to the series’ themes. According to Williams, her great-grandmother built businesses in the segregated South long before Black women were widely afforded those opportunities. She operated a penny-candy store, a juke joint, a barbecue business, and rental properties.
Williams said the experience also shaped her approach to banking leadership. She entered the financial services industry in the early 1980s, when she described the sector as one of the least diverse industries in corporate America. She later helped acquire four Black-owned banks that had originally been established during the 1960s, when many Black Americans were excluded from mainstream banking institutions. Those banks were consolidated under the OneUnited name.
Williams said the decision reflected “the community builder in me, which was greatly influenced by Ma Honey.”
The podcast’s first season features a roster of civic leaders, advocates, and entrepreneurs discussing the experiences that influenced their careers and identities. Guests include Sybrina Fulton, Marc Morial, Frederica Wilson, Daniella Levine Cava, Sheena Meade, and Felecia Hatcher.
For OneUnited, the series is intended to broaden the conversation around financial inequality beyond traditional banking metrics.
Williams said shame can prevent people from seeking financial knowledge, asking questions, or believing they deserve economic success in the first place.
“I hope we can make the feeling of shame taboo,” she said.