Five LinkedIn connections, most of them family. That was my whole network in December 2019, when I was a finance freshman at Ohio State. One day I came across FinMango, a nonprofit working on financial health, reached out, and interviewed that same day. Soon after, its founder, Scott Glasgow, texted me at almost 2 a.m. We talked on the phone for over an hour. It felt like fifteen minutes.
My first project was helping build a financial literacy and entrepreneurship program for 100 children and adults, with KUBUKA, that was taught in Zambia. Then I started recruiting. I brought in a fellow student, he brought in another, and in May the three of us ran the technology for the FinMango Extravaganza, a 24-hour live webinar with more than 50 speakers that set a Guinness World Record.
That fall I ran social media for The Covid Monitor, a volunteer project tracking COVID cases in K-12 schools. That work was featured on ABC Australia's PM program.
Through school I worked as an associate banker at Chase and interned in sustainable finance at Gen Advisory, operations at Amazon, and strategic transactions at Gateway Genomics. I graduated from Fisher College of Business with a finance degree and an economics minor, and joined HAAS Alert as its only financial analyst.
At Orange Barrel Media I managed payables for the photographers who shoot proof-of-posting images across its digital billboard network. Photography has been my constant since I was a kid on Long Island, so it was a fitting stop.
That August I joined the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission. I review capital funding requests before they go to the Ohio Controlling Board, and I built the agency's compliance tool for issuing contract, release, and permit numbers.
In September, The New York Times asked me when young adults should take over their own car insurance. My answer was not a birthday. It was a change in your life, like moving into your own place or saving the deductible plus two months of premiums.
Read the longer version, from a third-grade spelling bee on Long Island to now.
