Jacob Walthour, CEO and co-founder of Blueprint Capital Advisors, has been named to the Milken Institute’s Inclusive Capitalism Executive Council, a group of financial and academic leaders who develop strategies to create greater financial equity.
For Walthour, a well-known advocate of diversity and fairness in investing, this new role is a natural extension of his personal belief that wealth should be used to uplift communities. He sees his position on the council as a chance to do just that by working toward removing the barriers faced by underrepresented asset managers.
“It’s not about whether we’re individually successful,” Walthour said during a recent discussion on his career and outlook. “It’s what we do to have an impact with that success. I like to call it the ripple effect — you drop a rock in the water and the ripples keep traveling further and further away. We all have to have that ripple effect sort of mindset. It’s powerful.”
After spending three decades working on Wall Street, Walthour moved into asset management when he founded Blueprint Capital Advisors, a company that helps people invest in new businesses, private companies, and emerging markets.
Walthour’s view of inclusive capitalism is based on an acceptance that the capitalist economic system is not going anywhere. He says his aim is not to dismantle the system, but to make sure its benefits reach those who have been traditionally excluded. To Walthour, capital is the lifeblood of political and social power; it provides the means to fund candidates, seed innovative businesses, and sustain vital institutions like the Black church and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
“Capitalism, let me first and foremost say, it’s not going anywhere,” Walthour said. “You’re not going to topple that system. You can organize, advocate, legislate, litigate, do whatever you want to do: Capitalism isn’t going anywhere, and so what we have to figure out is how to make capitalism available to the many and not the few. How to make capitalism available to people who are willing to work smart, work hard, exhibit the kind of creativity that develops a new business or a new product that is disruptive. It can’t be that capital is only available to people who don’t look like me.”
Democratizing wealth is personal for Walthour, who saw firsthand how wealth transformed his parents. Neither of them finished high school — one only reaching seventh grade and the other 11th — yet they were able to start a restaurant business in upstate New York when they were in their 40s.
The success of their Savoia Bar & Restaurant and then the Jubilee Restaurant in Hudson, N.Y., changed the course of the Walthour family’s life. With their financial success, they were able to help their neighbors by hiring the “unhireable,” supporting local sports, and quietly paying for funeral costs for families in need. Their positive impact was so major that part of Warren Street in Hudson was eventually named “Jacob and Barbara Walthour Way” in their honor.
“They were in the restaurant business in upstate New York, and were hugely successful and generated a level of income that two people without college degrees never imagined,” Walthour said.
As a member of the Milken Institute’s council, Walthour wants to further that sense of community reinvestment. He said the institute can bridge the gap between academic insights and executive decisions. “They’re not just about thinking or researching things — they’re about taking action and trying not just to identify and understand the problem, but to fix the problem,” he said. “We think about the problem, the steps necessary to solve it, and then we take action steps to try to alleviate it.
“They’ve published whitepapers on moving more capital to Black-owned and people of color-owned asset managers. This is about legitimizing the issue, mapping the paths to resolution, and inspiring leaders to exercise their power to address it.”
Walthour has a reputation for advocating inclusive capitalism. In June 2020, his Blueprint Capital Advisors filed a federal lawsuit against New Jersey’s pension fund system, claiming that it systemically discriminates against Black-owned businesses. “I will fight that case until my last breath,” he said, referencing a 2024 New Jersey Disparity Study that proved Blueprint Capital’s claims that only 1% of the state’s contracts go to Black-owned firms.
“Do you need me to tell the state we have a problem?” he asked. “For some reason, I have been the only one willing to step up, stand up, and challenge the status quo in a state where 15% of its population is Black, but only 1% of contracts go to Black people.”
In January 2023, a federal judge allowed the racketeering allegations against the state of New Jersey, the Division of Investment (DOI), and several state officials to go forward, denying a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Blueprint Capital Advisors’ case is still moving forward.
Walthour sees litigation as a necessary tool for justice: “That’s how Black people have achieved a lot in America over time — advocated, legislated, litigated — Brown versus Board of Education; a lot of these things were litigated. We’re going to litigate this and show how they systematically excluded a group of people from doing business with the state pension fund, the way they have in construction and services and all the other areas,” he said.