Natasha Lewis, UCHS ’18, first became passionate about financial literacy during her junior year of high school. A teacher worked with an outside organization that came to the school on Thursdays to teach students about savings, credit, and investing. Natasha became aware of more people in her community that need to learn about these topics, and she was surprised that there were only eight students who participated in the sessions. As a student at St. Lawrence University, she worked for a Congressional campaign, first as an intern and then as a full-time staff, and interacting with 100s of people a day she became even more aware of the need to educate people about financial planning. “I realized that there was this taboo and stigma around talking about money,” Natasha says. “People think you only talk about financial planning if you make over 200K, but you should talk about it if you make 30K, 50K, 90K or whatever!”
As a student at St. Lawrence, Natasha started taking more and more business courses, and upon graduation, got an interview with Northwest Mutual. During the interview process, she saw the opportunity to combine her knowledge of the financial world with her desire to help her community. She developed a goal to reach as many people as possible to educate them about how to pay off their loans, get mortgages, and plan for retirement. While she is keeping busy in her job at Northwest Mutual, Natasha is looking for ways to share her knowledge with not only Uncommon students and families, but within her alumni network at St. Lawrence. She is happy to talk if you have questions about financial planning–look her up on LinkedIn if you’re interested!