Laura Levine has devoted her career to helping people of all ages better understand financial services through marketing and outreach, communications, and most recently, through education. In 2004, she became executive director of the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, a Washington DC-based coalition of about 150 national partners and 49 affiliated state coalitions, which share a commitment to “financial smarts for students” in pre-kindergarten through college.
Laura began her career with Vista Federal Credit Union at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, CA, and served as Vice President of Communications and Marketing for the California Credit Union League. She became a credentialed, Capitol Hill correspondent for a credit union trade publication before moving into the securities industry. Laura served as Director of Editorial Services for the National Association of Securities Dealers (now FINRA) and, later, as Director of Education and Information for the NASD Office of Individual Investor Services. From 1999-2004, Laura was Director of the NASDAQ Educational Foundation.
Since taking over at Jump$tart, Laura has continued raise awareness about financial literacy through presentations and the media, while growing the coalition at both the state and national levels. In 2008, Laura was appointed to the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy by President George W. Bush and chaired the Council’s Youth Committee. She currently serves on the Experian Consumer Council and the Retirement Security Coalition Advisory Board and has recently been an advisor to WNED’s Your Life, Your Money public television and outreach project and the Economic Insecurity initiative for Sesame Workshop.
A native of Los Angeles, Laura holds a degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Southern California and is a graduate of the Western CUNA Management School. She does not consider herself a financial expert, but rather, a staunch advocate for financial education and information and (she hopes) she is raising a financially literate son.