
I’m the banker!
They’re Jamie Dimon with a backpack.
At three New York/New Jersey high schools, 30 teenagers, in the summer before their senior year, learn the principles of consumer banking through a Capital One Bank program designed to promote financial literacy.
The students then help to run a bank branch within their schools in their last year of high school.
“The students are provided with career and college-readiness training and develop practical financial knowledge and skills,” said Capital One spokeswoman Shelley Solheim.
About 95 percent of the graduates of the program, which began in 2007, enroll in college, the bank says.
“I liked the course a lot, and it really helps you stand out to colleges,” says Nia Shuler, who took the banking course this summer. She is about to enter her senior year at Fordham High School for the Arts and will help to run its bank.
Although she hopes to star on Broadway someday, Shuler says the course is “helping me to learn about money. And that’s very important.”
She says her father and schoolmates encouraged her to apply for the program, which each year has more applicants than available slots. Getting in, she notes, requires a good résumé and sharp essay-writing skills.
Once they’re accepted, 10 students in each school (from the Bronx, Harlem and Newark, NJ) go through intensive training before they become responsible for teaching fellow students about finance. They also operate a bank that offers various savings products to students, staff members and administrators at their schools.
“I was knee-deep in the program and enjoyed all the extra work a lot,” said Isaac Ofori, a 21-year-old Bronx resident.
Though Ofori was initially reluctant to apply for the program, he found that the process of mastering financial skills became enjoyable.
“I got a kick out of teaching financial skills to people. It’s really exciting to know how various money products function and how I can use that knowledge to help people,” said Ofori, who participated in the program at Fordham Leadership Academy for Business and Technology.
“It was really a program that got me to want to go to college,” Ofori added. Indeed, he graduated from Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY, in just three years.
The bottom line (so to speak): Ofori now works for Capital One in Manhattan as a customer-service representative. He is in the process of earning his MBA.

