Robert E. (Bob) Hope is a veteran of the public relations and event marketing business. He is co-owner and president of Hope-Beckham. Clients have included Chick-fil-A Foundation, Turner Broadcasting, Belk, The Coca-Cola Company, Southern Company, Home Depot, Comcast and a variety of sports teams and leagues as well as non-profit organizations.

He is author of two books – “We Could Have Finished Last Without You” about his early days with the Braves, and “Greater Late than Never” about people who achieved their life’s success after age 50.

Bob Hope started working for the Atlanta Braves while in college and became the team’s director of public relations and promotions at age 24. He managed the Major League Baseball All-Star Game at age 25.And he was with Hank Aaron during the chase to break the all-time home run record of Babe Ruth. When Ted Turner bought the team, he was promoted to VP at age 29 and worked not only for the Braves but also the Turner-owned Atlanta Hawks and for Turner’s TV station.

He left Turner to work on sports, particularly the Olympics, for The Coca-Cola Company and then decided to go into the public relations agency business so he could work for both Coke and Turner, which led to a career in New York in a top job of the world’s largest public relations firm. Along the way, he has been involved in many Olympics, including Atlanta. He helped several cities with their campaigns to land major league sports franchises.

He created the Colorado Silver Bullets professional baseball team of elite women athletes. This led to a 14-year stint on the board of Billie Jean King’s Women’s Sports Foundation and six years as the only male on its executive committee. He promoted the Friendship Games, a basketball tournament in Israel of college age players from countries in conflict, primarily countries from the Middle East.

For the past 21 years, he organized a group of business leaders, now totaling about 70, to travel to rural Honduras each spring to work on schools, in villages and in medical clinics.He formed HAVE Foundation (Honduras Agalta Valley Education) to help fund the schools that his group helped build.

Bob is on the Board of Councilors of Carter Center and has traveled twice to Nepal as an election observer, working in the far-flung small villages and rural areas of the tiny country.

He is currently working with Andrew Young to lead the effort to move assets of the Nobel Peace Prize to Atlanta.

Bob is an active member of the Rotary Club of Atlanta.He was vice chairman and emcee of the Rotary International Convention in 2017.He is recipient of the Rotary International “Service Above Self Award,” the highest honor bestowed by the board of Rotary International.He has been Rotarian of the Year in the district and is the only member in the history of the Rotary Club of Atlanta to receive four of its top awards – hospitality, community service, international service and service to Rotary.

In the community, he has received an assortment of honors:

• Hospitality Hall of Fame by the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau,
• Father of the Year by the American Diabetes Association,
• Most Admired CEO by the Atlanta Business Chronicle,
• 100 Most Influential Atlantans by the Atlanta Business Chronicle
• 500 Most Powerful Atlanta Leaders by Atlanta Magazine
• George Goodwin Award for Community Service from the Public Relations Society of America

He is active in the community and serves on several boards:

• Founder and on the board of HAVE Foundation
• Board of the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau
• Board of Councilors of the Carter Center
• Investigative Committee of the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church
• Trustee of the Georgia Global Health Alliance
• Board of the Georgia Intellectual Property Alliance
• Board of Covenant House Georgia, co-chair of its “Night of the Broadway Stars” fundraiser

He has served on the boards of the Atlanta Braves and Ottawa Senators.

Bob’s wife, Susan, who died in 2017 of cancer, inspired him to be involved in community service.Since her death, the refugee store at IRC has been named for her, Children Read dedicated last year to her as its “Year of Hope”, and the counseling center at the Hope Middle School in Honduras is now the Susan Hope Counseling Center.