Wharton partners with Jay-Z’s Shawn Carter Foundation to enhance financial education at HBCUs

The Shawn Carter Foundation — founded by musical artist Jay-Z and his mother Gloria Carter — is partnering with the Wharton School to launch a program to advance financial education at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Champions for Financial Legacy is a collaborative effort between the Wharton Coalition for Equity and Opportunity and the foundation. The initiative, which launches in January, will teach financial literacy in for-credit or co-curricular courses at Lincoln University, Norfolk State University, and Virginia State University. 

The SCF draws funds for CFFL from Toyota Motor North America, who previously partnered with the foundation to provide tours to HBCUs along the East Coast. CFFL’s curriculum is sourced directly from Bridges to Wealth, a similar program on Penn’s campus that teaches financial fluency to high school students and adults in Philadelphia. 

Marks-Darivoff Family Professor of Strategy at Wharton Keith Weigelt has led Bridges to Wealth with the assistance of Penn undergraduates for 12 years. As a collaborator with the SCF, he implemented his curriculum near the foundation’s headquarters in Brooklyn and later a pilot program that would become the CFFL.

In a recent Bridges to Wealth session, over 30 high schoolers learned how to make strategic consumer choices, save money efficiently, and other critical information about storing and spending money from October to December. Throughout the program, students invested two $20 increments into the stock market to watch their investments develop in real time.

John Bartram High School junior Kaylee Khamdaronikone appreciated the opportunity to learn financial skills early on.

“Investing in stocks, that’s definitely something that a lot of people our age and our generation should start as soon as they can,” Khamdaronikone said. “You can hold it there for a long time, and then it can help you benefit in the future.”

Managing Director of the Coalition for Equity and Opportunity Fareeda Griffith noted that education can be a cornerstone in creating productive financial habits.

“As you think about something as simple as savings or investment, it seems like it’s something that everyone knows,” Griffith said. “If we just come from the premise that no one has the information, you provide the information, you do with it what you may. But most of the time when you have access to the information, your behaviors change, and so I think the notion of financial literacy is not enough alone. We need to change financial behaviors.”

In his teaching, Weigelt named generational wealth as one of the most important financial behaviors. 

“If you don’t pass on wealth, that means each new generation starts from zero,” Weigelt said. “We’re really pushing this intergenerational wealth. Because, you know, you have to start from zero… You have to start investing. The sooner you invest, the quicker your wealth is growing.”

The CFFL also features student ambassadors who will work alongside instructors to gain knowledge that will help their respective communities, in what Griffith describes as a “train the trainer” model. This aspect of the program aims to further financial education to populations beyond college students.

“This is one of the ways in which we can really have an impact on the wealth gap within this program. And so I’m excited to see what will come out of it,” she said.