Keynote Addresses, Breakout Sessions Examine Quality, Access, Impact
DENVER—The National Endowment for Financial Education® (NEFE®) hosted its biennial Financial Education Innovation & Impact (FEI&I) Summit on October 8-10, bringing together stakeholders from around the country who have a passion for improving financial literacy in their communities to connect, build networks and develop a vision for the future that will guide the fields of financial education and financial well-being.
“I can explain our Summit in one word: Energy. This event, the second one of its kind, drew in some of the great minds in financial education to discuss the past, present and future of effective and inclusive financial education. As always, we asked the tough questions to identify the ‘so what’ of the key issues facing our field and equipped attendees with new tools to implement into their work.”
Billy Hensley, Ph.D., president and CEO of NEFE
NEFE assembled researchers, advocates, policymakers and other thought leaders throughout the field for an event in Denver to celebrate successes in financial education, discuss the field’s current state and explore practical approaches for addressing gaps that would impact future work. The Summit was highlighted by:
- A keynote address given by Michelle Singletary, award-winning author and nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post, who identified the influencers of financial education while discussing her personal history with money and her storied career helping others with their financial journeys.
- A keynote address from best-selling author and regarded financial advisor Megan Gorman, who detailed how the middle class is faring, putting its current and future status into historical context.
- A panel discussion offering an interesting discussion on the intersection of financial education and physical and mental health.
- Breakout sessions featuring conversations on the challenges and effectiveness of K-12 instruction, the importance of closing the racial wealth gap, and barriers to financial participation.
- Announcement of the NEFE Innovation Award winners and the NEFE Impact Award winners for 2024.
In addition, the Summit included a series of breakout sessions exploring many of the key topics associated with financial education quality, access and impact:
- The quality session track included discussions on the mechanisms used to deploy financial education, considering cultural, economic, racial and geographic differences, and the industry’s integration of nontraditional educational methods and patterns of information consumption.
- The access track included sessions on the degrees to which diverse communities can obtain financial education, taking into account the accommodations needed for various life circumstances.
- The impact session track focused on quantitative and qualitative results demonstrating how successful financial education is in advancing financial well-being outcomes among different demographic groups and understanding the gaps that exist.
As with NEFE’s inaugural FEI&I Summit in 2022, the information and data shared at this Summit will serve as the foundation for inquiries, initiatives and collaborative endeavors leading into 2025 and beyond.
“We carefully selected each presentation and speaker to maximize the opportunity to learn, listen and share. As I expected, we collected a great deal of information from the presentations and conversations. Our team looks forward to packaging all we learned for broader dissemination to help our field develop additional exciting outcomes for those they serve,” Hensley says.
