Suzanne Matthews spent 27 years on Wall Street, 23 of them at Bank of America and Bank of America Securities, where she was a managing director of corporate and investment banking, working with multinational organizations to help them raise capital in international markets. She then was at HSBC Securities, where she managed government and public sector business, dealing with large multinational organizations like the World Bank.
Her next stop? Westchester Community College (WCC).
In May 2011, she became director of the Center for Financial and Economic Education where her job is to educate students, faculty and the community at large about personal finance. The center is funded by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation.
“My job (at HSBC) was eliminated in the mortgage crisis,” said Matthews, who left the banking world in 2006. “I realized that I would have to reinvent myself, putting my skills into something I was passionate about and also giving back to the community in some way.”
Matthews said she first became interested in the issue of financial literacy in the late ”™90s through the Financial Women”™s Association of New York. “We also started a financial education program for high school students,” she said. “We called it ”˜Financial Backpack,”™ and I helped found it.” At that point she started to realize how little students knew about personal finance. “How to pay for college, how to make a budget, they didn”™t know any of this.”
So from 2006 to 2011, she worked for the Muriel Siebert Foundation, which has a strong commitment to financial education, as well as at the Museum of American Finance doing workshops for high school students. She ran seminars at Baruch College and Columbia University, and workshops on personal finance at the New York Public Library, all part of her consulting business working with nonprofits. Then in 2009, she worked with Westchester County, which was looking to implement programs for the community about financial literacy. That led to her interviewing for, and getting, the position at WCC.
“The financial crisis underscored the fact that we need more education in financial literacy,” Matthews said. “The biggest issue for students and adults is not knowing how to save money. Over a third of the adult population in the United States has no savings. The other big issue is debt ”“ student loan debt and credit card debt.” Studies have shown that there is a strong correlation between financial education early in life and adult behavior with money, she said. How early should this start? “The President”™s Advisory Council on Financial Capability came up with a policy for financial education called ”˜Money as You Grow.”™ It”™s a set of financial principles used to teach children about money.”
The first set is for 3- to 5-year-olds. “You can teach them that you need money to buy things, that we earn money by working and that you may have to wait to get what you want.”
As for adults, Matthews says she starts by helping people get a handle on where their money is going and what they can change in order to start saving. If someone is in debt, she says the thing to do is not go to a debt ”“ resolution agency, “which can get people into more trouble than they were in before, but to go to a financial counselor certified by the department of Housing and Urban Development.”
At Mercy College, Pamela Chasin, who spent 16 years on Wall Street, at JPMorgan Chase and UBS in fixed income sales and trading, is developing and launching the Women”™s Leadership Institute.
“It”™s still very much in the developmental stages, the brainstorming stage,” she said. “As a female professional with a background on Wall Street there historically have not been a lot of women role models. My goal is to help encourage and support women in their professional life and pursuits.”
Chasin left the world of finance because of the demands of family life. The 38-year-old has three children ages 4, 7 and 9. She comes from a family of teachers and always thought she would enter the classroom at some point in her career.
Even though it hasn”™t been her choice right at the moment, she says she wants to show women that they can have a family and career.
“In my experience there are very few senior women with families. To the extent we can help foster more role models, we should. Women tend to fall out of the workforce because they feel unsupported.”
That, she says, leads into another issue facing women, the glass ceiling. “I think we”™ve come a long way on that, companies want to promote women but there”™s not enough of a talent pool at the senior levels because women drop out of the workforce for family reasons.”
