6 minute read
Giving Back
Giving Back
Three immigrant students are becoming financial planners to help others achieve their American dreams
By Lauren Quinn
WHEN FINANCES GET LOST IN TRANSLATION
Jocelyn Li started thinking about money and finances long before most children do, but it wasn’t because of an innate desire to get rich. She just wanted her dad back.
When Jocelyn was only 6 months old, her father moved from Shanghai to Los Angeles to earn a better salary to support his young family. But due to financial difficulty, he didn’t go back to China to visit for more than five years.
“For the first six years of my life, I didn’t see my dad. I just didn’t know him,” Jocelyn says. “My grandma would always tell me that if we could have saved enough, my dad would have come back earlier. So the concept of money has been on my mind for a long time.”
It wasn’t until she was 14 that Jocelyn’s dad was financially stable enough to bring her and her mom to join him in Los Angeles. Fitting in was hard, even though Jocelyn had learned English in China.
So much about America was different, she noticed, including its financial systems. And those differences were making it harder for recent immigrants to get ahead.
“Other immigrants in my community would ask me to translate or interpret their bank statements. At first I didn’t understand the statements either; I had to do my own research,” Jocelyn says. And residents at the mostly Chinese nursing home where she volunteered explained they had trouble saving even small amounts of money. “I thought, yeah, I can help them with that. I came up with a workshop educating them on how they can save more toward their little goals.”
Seeing the impact on families of basic financial literacy, and believing it might have been the key to bringing her own family back together, led Jocelyn to pursue the financial planning program in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at Illinois.
Currently a junior in the program, Jocelyn plans to return to LA after graduation so she can make up for lost time with her parents and help other immigrant families avoid common financial mistakes that could keep them from realizing their American dreams.
“I can’t make up my childhood; it’s gone,” she says. “But I know there are a lot of other families in similar situations. That’s why I want to pursue my career in financial planning.”
A CAREER THAT CHANGES LIVES
The financial planning program has been around for less than a decade, but graduates are already doing big things, according to program director Craig Lemoine, who holds a doctorate in personal financial planning and is a Certified Financial Planning professional.
“One is on a partner track in a registered investment advisory firm in Chicago. The type of families he’s working with are leaders of industry, worth tens of millions of dollars,” Lemoine says. “Another of our graduates was the president of the Financial Planning Association of Illinois, and I would say at least three or four have started their own firms and are at the point where they're hiring.”
Success in financial planning isn't necessarily proportional to the client’s financial portfolio, though. Instead, Lemoine says, it can be measured in the way it changes lives.
“Our students learn about money, credit, investing, life insurance, and more, and they share that knowledge with every client they touch once they’re out in the workforce. It’s not an academic exercise anymore. These families’ entire trajectories are different because of our advice. You can see it ripple.”
EASING THE TRANSITION FOR IMMIGRANT FAMILIES
“My parents came to America with nothing but a suitcase, my sister, and the little money they had from farming back in Poland,” Daniel Ogrodny says. “That’s it. They had to work hard jobs, overtime every day to afford their tiny one-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. Even though I was little, I still remember days when I didn’t get to see them.”
Daniel’s parents were working to make a life in the U.S., and one of their highest priorities was education. “They started saving for college tuition the moment they came to America. Every bonus, any extra money, and a decent cut out of every weekly paycheck went into a tuition savings account,” he says. “They sacrificed vacations, social events, and all other ‘wants’ to fund our tuitions.”
Unlike Jocelyn, who is a James Scholar, Daniel wasn’t offered any scholarships or financial assistance from U of I. He had those options at other institutions, but he chose U of I because, for him, it had the best reputation and afforded the biggest opportunities.
Daniel first chose an engineering track for the promise of a high-paying future. But it just didn’t feel like a fit. After hearing Daniel’s story, one of his advisors suggested the financial planning program.
“She kept asking me, ‘Why aren’t you following what you believe in?’ Finally, I decided to give the program a shot, and suddenly I knew what I was missing,” he says.
The program feels right to Daniel, now a junior, not only because of the small class sizes and meaningful relationships he’s forged with faculty and classmates, but because he sees it as an opportunity to give back to his own community, people like his parents.
“I wish my parents could have gotten a financial planner to help them with their stress,” he says. “People’s minds shouldn’t always revolve around finances. They should be enjoying other things in life, getting that weight off their shoulders. Those are the people I want to help—people with the most trouble, who are just trying to find a way out.”
SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF FINANCIAL LITERACY
Areeba Ahmed was only a year-anda-half old when she, her mother, and her siblings reunited with her father in America. He had emigrated from Pakistan years before marrying Areeba’s mother, visiting his growing family back home as often as possible on his meager salary.
“My dad’s big dream was for all his kids to get a better education. He wanted us to pursue the things that we wanted versus what he had to go through as a child,” Areeba says.
The family settled in a suburb of Chicago, but the adjustment was hard. “We didn’t know many people here, so we were very lonesome. And we couldn’t go back to Pakistan because getting there was too expensive. So we had to rely on each other.”
As was true for Jocelyn and Daniel, witnessing the sacrifices of her parents gave Areeba a desire to give back. And financial planning felt like the right fit for her personality.
“To me, financial planning is an art. Translating what you learn in a way that makes sense to people—I think it’s really beautiful,” says Areeba, now a junior in the program. “And because of my background and bilingualism, I’ll be able to help other immigrant families understand financial literacy and reach their goals.”
ACHIEVING THEIR OWN AMERICAN DREAMS
Program director Craig Lemoine sees something special in Jocelyn, Daniel, and Areeba, and he’s not the only one. A believer in the value of professional development for undergraduates, Lemoine has taken these students and many others to financial planning conferences and company visits. And, the way he tells it, people in the industry
are clamoring over them—not only for their high academic achievement, but because of their unique backgrounds.
For example, Lemoine helped Daniel find an internship in Chicago with a financial planner who wanted to better serve his Polish-speaking clients. And Jocelyn is getting interest from companies for her ability to speak two Chinese dialects. The sky’s the limit, Lemoine says.
“All three of them have the commonality of coming from immigrant families, realizing their communities need help with financial literacy, and wanting to help. So many people talk about wanting to be a financial advisor to help people with their investment and risk management needs, your basic capitalist reasons. But these three all picked this premier university to make their communities better. It's wonderful to see.”
Jocelyn Li poses in her Chinese school uniform with a friend. She spent her first 14 years in Shanghai before joining her father in Los Angeles.
Daniel Ogrodny and his family wear traditional dress from their native Poland for special occasions to help keep their culture alive in America.
Areeba Ahmed, shown as a child wearing a blue shalwar qameez, poses with her younger sister during the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.
