Students Celebrated, Awarded Scholarships for Completing Financial Education Program Aimed at Closing Racial Wealth Gap

By Tracy Correa Lopez

Two dozen high school seniors, predominantly from Oakland, gave up their Saturday mornings the past six months to spend time in a classroom on the campus of UC Berkeley learning about personal finance, investing and wealth creation.

This past Saturday (Feb. 10), they wrapped up their final class and in a celebration before family and friends received certificates for completing the Economic Equity and Financial Education Program. Each student also earned an $8,000 college scholarship from PG&E and The PG&E Corporation Foundation (PG&E Foundation) to help them invest in their education.

This is now the second class of students to successfully complete this unique academic program that accepted its first cohort in fall 2022. Three quarters of this year’s graduating class are female and most of the students are Black.

One of the graduates is 17-year-old Erikah Washington, a student at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, who said she was grateful for what she learned.

“Through this program I have gained so much confidence and no longer view finances as something scary. With the knowledge obtained from the program I know I will make good financial decisions moving forward,” she said.

PG&E created the program after two years of planning as a racial justice initiative following the George Floyd tragedy to help address economic challenges faced by African Americans. PG&E and The PG&E Foundation provided more than $500,000 in funding through its community charitable Better Together Giving Program to the program each year. This program is one of several funded by PG&E and The PG&E Foundation that provide support and scholarships to students throughout PG&E’s service area as they pursue their higher education goals. Funding for the comes from PG&E shareholders, not PG&E customers.

Together, they partnered with the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and Berkeley Executive Education, Mills College at Northeastern University, and Amenti Capital Group for the program that helped prepare the students from Oakland and the Greater Bay Area for future both financial success and academic leadership. 

Students took courses taught by Haas professors and financial industry professionals on topics including personal finance, capital markets and wealth creation, financial data analysis and investments — topics foreign to most of the teens. African American Haas undergraduates also served as mentors to the students.

After launching in late 2022, the program saw its first 24-student graduate in May of 2023. Otis Ward was one of them and he shared his journey in the PG&E short film “Change the System: Building Black Wealth.” Ward is currently studying computer science and engineering at Stanford University.

On Saturday, 24 more students were celebrated.

Speakers included those who taught the students, like Panos Patatoukas from Haas School of Business and Jason Miles, an African American venture capitalist with more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry and founder of Amenti Capital Group. They commended the students and talked about what they could achieve.

Hard facts were also flashed on a screen during the event, including: “In 2022, the median Black household had a net worth of $44,900, less than 15% of the median net worth of white households at $285,000” and, “The wealth gap was roughly the same in 2016 as it was in 1962, two years before the Civil Rights Act was enacted.” It was to remind the students of why what they learned was important to make a change.

PG&E’s Vincent Davis, senior vice president of Customer Experience, was one of the speakers at the graduation. He stressed the importance of education, talked about his early career as an accountant and overcoming self-doubt to find success.

After the event, he said he was impressed by the students and optimistic at what they could accomplish.

“My intentions were to inspire and support them. As good fortune would have it, I was also inspired because I saw firsthand the endless possibilities of their bright futures,” said Davis.

The program was conceived by PG&E Community Relations Chief Jimi Harris, also one of the graduation speakers. He said it was exciting to see another class of students complete the program and “to partner with a premier academic institution like the University of California at Berkley to provide this opportunity to these exceptional young scholars.”

He said he was proud to see another group of students complete the program and gain critical knowledge and hoped the program could encourage similar curriculum in schools.

Said Harris: “I am confident that this program will help set these students up for success with their future academic and financial endeavors. Additionally, there is a growing demand for financial education to be more broadly available for students in California, and hopefully this program will serve as a model to create more access to this type of educational content.”