This John Hancock makes name for himself in larger world

A La Conner alum who shares a famous name with a hero of the American Revolution is himself well known for tireless work over the past quarter-century on behalf of youths.

John Hancock, a 1983 graduate of La Conner High School, was student body president and the Northwest B league boys’ basketball player of the year his senior year – and joined by his younger brother, Robert, in the Braves starting lineup. Today he leads by linking America’s students to real-world career options.

“People learn best when the learning is experiential and experimental,” Hancock, now president and CEO of Junior Achievement of Georgia, told the Weekly News from his office in Atlanta. “Young people are curious about their futures and often perform better when they see the relevance of what they are doing (in regard) to those futures.”

While growing up in La Conner, Hancock clearly envisioned a future that would guide him onto some avenue of education.

“I had a great high school experience in La Conner and have several favorite memories from those years,” he reflected. “There were great teachers and coaches like Maureen Harlan, Steve Crawford, Ralph Dalseg, Norm Hoffman, Vince Sellen and Landy James to name a few. Many of the people I looked up to the most were my teachers and coaches. No doubt, this influenced my interest in an education-related field.

“In many ways,” Hancock noted, “I might have thought I would have become a teacher and school administrator – and that would have been a great path. But, in retrospect, I’m grateful for the path I am on in that it has exposed me to many sectors of society and many different cities and markets around the country.

"I get to be involved in the broad education movement,” he stressed, “but am not limited to one school.”

Still, his route to Junior Achievement – whose mission is to provide young people the necessary knowledge and tools to realize economic success, plan for their future and make educated academic and economic choices – was not direct.

After high school, Hancock enrolled at Whitman College in Walla Walla, where in 1987 he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science.

“Whitman was an incredible place to go to college,” said Hancock. “It was very challenging academically with great professors, beautiful location and perfect size for me having come from a small high school.

“Going to Whitman,” he insisted, “was one of the top five best decisions I ever made in my life.”

It helped, said Hancock, that former La Conner schoolmates Brian Hedlund and Sara Harlan were there at the same time.

From Whitman, Hancock was off to Middle America.

“After graduating from Whitman,” he recalled, “I moved to Indianapolis for a job unrelated to Junior Achievement. That work eventually ran its course and I needed a new job. I networked with some people I knew and respected and eventually got an interview with Junior Achievement. I was 30 and was offered an entry level job doing marketing and fundraising.

“I liked the organization’s mission,” said Hancock, “and the opportunity to grow within it. There was no grand plan and it was nothing fancy. I just started working hard, learning and staying open to opportunities. Next thing you know, 26 years have passed.”

Today he leads one of the largest and most innovative Junior Achievement chapters in the country.

Earlier this year, Hancock participated in the dedication of a new 15,000 square-foot hybrid space that combined Junior Achievement’s BizTown and Finance Park features to offer increased economics and personal finance learning opportunities for Dalton, Georgia middle school students.

Junior Achievement of Georgia has also broken ground this year on a new 25,000 square-foot Discovery Center in Savannah, which houses state-of-the-art simulation-based programs for middle school students designed to expose them to different careers and show how businesses and economies work, as well as prioritizing personal money management.

The Georgia chapter has also teamed with the NBA Atlanta Hawks and Chase Bank to launch a program for high school and college students that focuses on developing financial health and critical thinking skills.

"I’ve enjoyed being a part of connecting education to business and business to education,” Hancock said. “These two critically important sectors of our society operate very differently and too often don’t relate or connect well. Junior Achievement is the best organization in the world helping to make this connection, bringing people from business into schools to teach and mentor students and getting students out of school buildings and into real-world work environments.”

On a personal level, Hancock has mirrored the Junior Achievement model by melding education with his climb up the career ladder.

He completed work on a master’s degree in public affairs and nonprofit management from Indiana University in 1997, while living in Indianapolis.

In 2018, at age 53, he earned a second master’s degree in applied positive psychology by commuting monthly from Portland, Oregon – where he helped create a popular Junior Achievement podcast called The Money JAR – to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“Positive psychology is the study of human well-being,” Hancock said, “and how people and organizations flourish. Penn is the epicenter of this field and I wanted to learn more as it related to the work we are doing with young people at Junior Achievement and my leadership of an organization. This was an exceptional experience with some of the most impressive and dedicated people I have ever known.”

Meanwhile, back in Portland, Hancock was enjoying being part an emerging media force.

“It was fun to be on the front end of the podcast craze,” he said of his work with The Money JAR, a family finance-oriented program, “and the show is still going.”

While living and working in Oregon, Hancock and his wife, Roodi, who is from the Detroit area – the couple met in Indiana – were able to visit La Conner up to eight times a year. Since relocating three years ago to Atlanta, Hancock said those trips here have been halved.

But La Conner is never far from his thoughts, especially when it comes to offering advice to students attending his alma mater today.

“Don’t worry about a particular job or career,” he counsels, relishing the chance to embrace a platform that would have been his had he gone into teaching and coaching. “You’re likely to change it several times over the course of your life. Instead, focus on lifelong learning. Take advantage of every opportunity to learn what you can. That includes formal education, informal education, travel and the like.

“The future of work,” he predicts, “will reward people who can communicate well, collaborate in teams, lead strategy and affect change.”

Switching his view 180 degrees to hindsight, Hancock is among those lucky few who would not change anything.

“La Conner,” he said, “was a great place to grow up and go to school. The size of the school allowed us to be a part of a lot of different sports, leadership and community activities. Those are things that in bigger schools we might not have been able to participate in.”

Hancock remembers, too, the sense of camaraderie and community present in the La Conner of his youth, times spent hanging with best friends Mike Wilbur and Steve Hahn and looking forward to playing in the state basketball tournament.

“The trips to Spokane, the Davenport Hotel, Judy Iverson driving the team bus and being part of such a great tradition was all great,” he said. “I wish it could have lasted longer.”

Nor does he have any regrets about his choice of profession.

“I’ve never had a problem getting out of bed in the morning,” he said. “Like any other work, there is a grind to what I do but I have never questioned the purpose or value of my work.”