John Burnett: GOP candidate for New York City Comptoller.
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, BURNETT IS THE REAL ROLE MODEL FOR BLACK AMERICANS:
* His parents grew up in the Jim Crow South — James in Durham, NC, and Mary in Savannah, Ga. Their experiences informs Burnett’s mantra of “No excuses” — “How can I say, ‘This is difficult,’ when my father had it 10 times as hard?”
* His father Starting out as a dishwasher, his dad did his job super fast so he could watch the cook. He learned to cook himself and eventually became the chef for an entire hospital. Even after becoming a Pentacostal pastor, he continued as a chef because he didn’t believe in living off his congregation.
* Burnett enrolled in the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Burnett quit because he wasn’t learning anything.
* With no degree, he still talked his way into a margin-analyst position at Dean Witter.
* In eight years, he rose to a “compliance” position which immersed him in SEC, NYSE and state securities regulations. He then moved to Smith-Barney for another eight years, as manager of the Global Markets compliance division.
* Still working full-time, he went back to school at night earning a BS degree in Leadership and Management from NYU, then an MBA from Cornell.
* HIS INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHY FOR NYC FUNDS:
He’d bring a common-sense, no-nonsense approach to city investment: “I believe in investing in an ethically and socially responsible manner [within reason] . . . If [say, green energy] is . . . earning at a comparable rate as other investments, sure I’ll support it. If it’s only yielding a small percentage, say 2 percent and I need it to earn eight, my dollars aren’t going there. That would be a violation of my fiduciary responsibilities in favor of doing something nice and social.”