062: Sherry Smith - Helping Under-Resourced Students Create Their Own Journey to Success

Jonathan DeYoe: Hey, welcome back. On this episode of the Mindful Money podcast, I’m chatting with Sherry Smith. With 35 years in education, Sherry focuses on college selection, college admission, financial aid, and matriculation, especially in underserved, underresourced, and first generation college students. I wanted to have her on the show because she’s the executive director of Berkeley Community Scholars, where she creates pathways for deserving but underresourced students in my own backyard. Full disclosure. Berkeley Community Scholars is one of the three organizations that mindful money supports in our mission to bridge the wealth gap. Now, when someone takes a course, attends a boot camp, or becomes a member of Mindful money, some of the cost of their programs goes to support scholarships at Berkeley community scholars. Sherry, thanks for joining us today. Welcome to the Mindful Money podcast.

Sherry Smith: Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Jonathan DeYoe: First, where do you call home, and where are you connecting from today?

Berkeley and been here since: 1980

Jonathan DeYoe: Did you grow up here or did you grow up someplace else?

Sherry Smith: I grew up in southern California, so I grew up in Long beach for the first part of my life, and then we moved to Los Angeles when I went to high school.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, my firm, the EP wealth, where I do the wealth management, they just had their annual shindig, the summit, where teaching classes, everyone gets to meet everybody in Long beach. So I didn’t get to go because, as you know, my back has got problems. So I had to lay down for three days instead of go to this thing, and I missed out. It’s okay. So most of your adult life has been in Bay area.

Sherry Smith: Yeah, I left Southern California when I was 18 to go to college and really have been in the Bay area ever since. I hiatus to Boston for a couple of years, grad school, and then back down to Southern California for my husband’s grad school. But then we ended up right back here.

Jonathan DeYoe: It’s tough to leave this place.

Sherry Smith: Yeah, it’s a hard place to. We decided we wanted to raise kids in northern California, not southern California. So we made the commitment to stay here.

Jonathan DeYoe: I’m curious, growing up in southern California, not that this is specific to something, but as a kid, what did you learn about money? What did you learn about personal finance as a kid?

Sherry Smith: I can say I don’t really have a memory of money at all. Both my parents worked really hard. My mom was a teacher. My dad didn’t go to college, and we didn’t do chores and get money that way. I remember kind of the first time thinking about money and how to use it and how to have to be responsible was before my brother. I have a twin brother, and before we went to college, my mom sat us down six months before and said, okay, you’re paying our bills. Not literally like that. We had to go work and pay the bills, but she sat us down and we had to write all the checks. So it was like we didn’t know how to fill out a check. And so we did that for six months. We had to go back and forth and look at all the different things that they had to pay for, and it was overwhelming. And I didn’t know how to drive. I didn’t get my driver’s license until three weeks before I went to college because I was scared of driving in LA. My parents took care of us. And, uh, again, it was for me just now that I know. It was just. I don’t know how they did it with the work that they did, but they did, and they were incredible and we’re wonderful, and we had a great childhood. But now that I know and see what other people have had, it was like, wow, this was, uh, a very different life.

Jonathan DeYoe: I’ve never heard anyone say. My parents sat me down before I went to college, and for six months they had me write the checks so that you could see every little expense, because just for listeners who aren’t of age, aren’t as old as we are, there was a time when it all came out of the same checking account. There wasn’t any PayPal or Venmo or all the checking accounts. You got to see it was all checks. Like, there was no automatic payment or anything like that. So you saw every expense?

Sherry Smith: Absolutely. And there was no atms. And my mom, every year for our birthdays, would give us a bond and I didn’t know what that was, but we found those actually, a little while ago and then found the bonds that she gave to my kids in cards that we cleaned out our garage. It was hilarious. And they were like, what are these? And I’m like, I don’t know if I even really know what those are today. But, yeah. So we certainly weren’t talking about savings and no understanding at all of, uh, investments.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, that just makes you normal. Not many families talk about investments. And we did, but I’m a weird, weird, weird kid for that. Do you remember any stories of shopping? Like, mom, I want this. No, you can’t have that. Or mom, I want this. Yes, let’s buy that. When did you first realize that money was an important piece?

Sherry Smith: I probably say more towards high school because we grew up in Long beach until I was 13. Like I said, my mom was a teacher and then she was a principal, and I think we were just exposed to what we could do. So it wasn’t really a huge thing. We went on one vacation a year. We drove, usually to Canada, stopped in Sacramento, stopped at Crater Lake. First time I got on a plane, I was twelve, and we went to Hawai. That was the only vacation we ever actually took as a family on a plane. So I don’t really remember a lot of money until I got to high school. Then I was student body president in my high school, and then I had to be in charge of all of the student body funding. And then I had to kind of figure things, you know, my parents would take us to the garment district once a year in LA to buy our clothes for school. And that was the one time we’d go shopping. My mom made all of our clothes because she loved to sew. So money was not the source or the central part. Again, I would say, until we got to college and then realizing, oh my gosh, who comes up with at that point, $15,000 at one time to spend on a, uh, college expense? We went to public high school, so we didn’t learn that expense. I didn’t even know there was private high schools until I was a junior in high school. And then I’m like, oh, other people do other things, right? So not a great deal of understanding of the flow and the importance of what money allows you to do, which for me, at this point, it buys you time.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. It’s interesting. I hear some stories where people are told, no, a lot. They don’t have any resources, and so then they really do understand the lacking of resource and what that does. There’s something beautiful about. I like to see people get a lot of education when they’re younger, more education when they’re younger about these things from their family. But there’s something beautiful about protecting you from the issues, because it just sort of becomes overwhelming when you graduate from college and you have to take care of this stuff. And it’s probably better to build into it a little bit, but have a childhood, don’t necessarily have to worry about it and just be exposed, what you could do. I kind of like that as a path. Before we talk about Berkeley community scholars, tell us, just from a work perspective, what led you there? What was the development process that said, you know what, I’m going to lead this organization in Berkeley, California.

ates. So I traveled for about: 1012

Jonathan DeYoe: I came from a family of. We were less than as well. We were on the rich side of town, but we were the poor kids on the rich side of town, so we weren’t on the other side of town. We could always say that we were that respect, but I came away just feeling horrible about it. And I had great love for my parents and all those kinds of things. But it’s interesting how different people develop with similar backgrounds, or what is the thing that makes somebody go a certain way. I kind of want to get into this when we’re talking about Berkeley community scholars, because I know that creating more equitable outcomes is sort of the vision, it’s sort of what the goal is with the providing of the scholarships. But could you just, first of all, describe fundamentally what the problem is that you’re solving for with Berkeley community scholars?

Sherry Smith: Well, it’s multiple problems, really, that we’re working on. But the simplest way to say is that we’re trying to give all students an opportunity, particularly from Berkeley High. We are very Berkeley centric if they have the dream, and even if they don’t have the dream, because they just don’t think it’s in their wheelhouse or that they have the right steps to get there. We want everyone to be able to go and get a college degree, and we are unapologetic that, uh, we think a college degree allows a student to have a fighting chance to have success in their life, and they get to decide what that success is. But for us both, economic success, emotional success, health success, relationships, we find, and again, all the reports that students who have a college degree less likely to be unemployed, less likely not to have health care, less likely to go through messy relational situations, not saying we’re all human. We all do that. But how you live and work through those things is very different when you have a bigger life perspective. And we believe that’s what really college does. So, simply, we’re trying to give kids that experience, thus allowing them to walk into life after college and set themselves up for at least financial stability, so that the other things in their life can also happen in a more positive way.

Jonathan DeYoe: So you meet a bunch of kids, some of which think, college isn’t really in my future. It’s not even that they have thought about it and have decided it’s not possible for them. It’s just they haven’t really even thought about it. How do you give somebody that gift of, uh, hey, you can go to college. Have you ever thought about going to college? How do you bridge that?

rkeley community school since: 2019

Jonathan DeYoe: I don’t want to ask the hard question. I’m going to ask the hard question because I think Berkeley, I love Berkeley. When I first came here as a student at the graduate theological union, I joined 24 hours fitness, and I was on a treadmill, and next to me on a different treadmill was, who’s the short guy? That was the head of economics for Clinton economic department. It was, uh, oh, I forget his name. It’s just escaping me.

Sherry Smith: I was going to say, rob somebody.

Jonathan DeYoe: So it’s like, you can go out in Berkeley and you can be, I play soccer with a Nobel Prize winner. Like, I play soccer with people that have won the touring award. There’s so much intellectual capacity, and so many people have such big hearts. But then you look at the struggle that’s gone on with Berkeley High for 50 years about the inequity of outcomes. And even with busing, even with all the things based on basically the zip code, or if you live in the hills or the flats or south or north, it makes a huge difference. So can you just talk to some of those statistics around, and, uh, you probably know them specifically from Berkeley, but I’m also thinking nationally around college access, success rates, and just the inequality to start.

rganization revised itself in: 2008

Jonathan DeYoe: What are some of the unique things that I’m imagining first in family to go to college. Like my parents went to college, they could give me kind of a story. It’s really tough. Make sure you got to be on the day to sign up for your classes. It’s going to be confusing. This is something you’re going to run into. You may not get the class you want. This is what you think about is never like, how do they get that information? Is that something that the coaching gives them or is there other issues that they face as first and family? It’s got to be pretty tough. First and family going to college these days.

Sherry Smith: It’s really tough. I mean, what’s really nice is most colleges have a, ah, first gen program, a first generation program. So there’s actually an office there. Students can go and ask any question they want. I mean, they can do that anywhere in the college. But again, it’s where do you feel safe and where do you trust that someone’s not going to ridicule you or shame you or all those different kinds of things which then get into the whole social emotional situation. Right? So we are there. So our summer orientation is all about that. I mean, here’s a glossary. What’s a unit? How many units do you need to graduate? What’s a major, what’s a minor? Uh, study abroad. What do you mean? What’s a portal? We literally break down and say, this is what it’s going to be. You’re not walking through a high school door and having walking into your first class and they’re just like, here’s your book, here’s this, here’s your pan. You have to create the journey. So we do that. We have a pretty extensive summer orientation program. It’s gotten smaller and smaller, but we do. And then we also have a mentor handbook. And so the mentor is also being educated and reminding them like, hey, in case you forgot that you didn’t know that you need to do this. We do newsletters every month. So hey, don’t forget your financial aid is due in two months. Get on it. We’ll remind them. Um, don’t forget, housing application, first come, first serve. If you want to get into housing. Hey, your rent might be. Your lease is up. You got to redo your lease every year. It’s not automatic, right? So all those kinds of things is exactly why the advisor and mentor part of our program works. Because kids hopefully don’t get caught into, like, oh, my God, the day before this is going to end. Because most kids, if that happens, that’s who walks away from college. Right? And even our staff, half, uh, my staff is working a second job because that’s what you have to do to live in the Bay area. If you’re 25 to 35, which is crazy, half the staff is our students. So they’ve been there, done that, but they’re also sticklers about, like, get your stuff together. Like, yeah, that’ll happen to us, too. And here’s what it takes. But it’s also not that. Put on your boots and strap yourself up and let’s go. Because we also know all these isn’ts get in the way. You didn’t get that job interview because your name is x, y, and z. So you didn’t even make it across to get any interview because someone couldn’t pronounce your name right. You interviewed and didn’t know what to wear. And so you wore jeans and a t shirt, and you really should have had a button down shirt. Know, and at least a backpack looking like you knew what you were. Know. You don’t know what a job shadow like, this is why, for us, getting kids, like, here’s what the work world looks like. Outside of being an Uber driver, outside, know, working at Taco Bell, outside of working at, like, here’s what it really means if you’re going to go into a more. And I hate the word professional, but a different kind of setting. And so we talk about all that, and we talk about all the different things you’re going to run into, like, people. If you walk in the door and you’re a black male and you’re 64. Yeah. You’re going to scare people because that’s, um, what we do in society. We already have this image of, like, the first thing that’s going to come in their mind is, I’m scared versus God, what a wonderful young man. Or you happen to be an asian descent and you have an accent, and they’re going to be like, oh, yeah, they just don’t get it. Where they could be a biochemist and be brilliant. Right? So helping our kids understand, don’t personalize that, uh, to allow that to stop you from moving ahead. And then how do you make sure as you get your foot in the door that you allow others to come behind you and not feel that way because you’re not taking on that same Persona that we’ve created in the United States for four or 500 years. Right? We do some simple things, but they’ve got lots of legs underneath them.

Jonathan DeYoe: I have this question. I’m sensitive to this as an insensitive question. So if I had a choice, I would choose to have resources. If I had the.

Sherry Smith: I’m, um.

Jonathan DeYoe: There’s this quote from Warren Buffett, and Warren Buffett, obviously is one of the most resourced people in the world, right? And he said something like, I want to give my kids enough so they feel they could do anything, but not enough so they can do nothing. So that sort of suggests there’s this fear of people that have money, that their kids are going to be lazy, do nothings. Right. I’m wondering if being underresourced, you end up with a benefit. It’s underweighted relative to having resources. But I wonder if you have this ingenuity, resourcefulness, resilience in the face of difficulty that you develop because it’s hard. And, uh, I wonder if you just touch on that. And I realize it’s an insensitive question, and I apologize for that.

Sherry Smith: I would say yes, yes and yes. But it doesn’t mean that it makes life any easier, right?

Jonathan DeYoe: No, of course not.

nd even buy our house of, uh,: 1200

Jonathan DeYoe: So, do you have any amazing success stories? Stories where you found an individual that had the desire, the ability, didn’t have the financial support, needed some coaching, but they got the financial support through the organization, got the coaching, and then they just blossomed. Like, they became critical members of the community?

that have been out of college: 1012

Jonathan DeYoe: And there’s kind of got to be a path. Like, maybe not today, but maybe in the future, right? There’s got to be a path, otherwise it’s not ever going to be equal.

Sherry Smith: We’re never going to get any closer, right? And so for us, talking a lot about equity and racial equity and gender equity and family equity, what does that look like? And it’s funny because I told you, I’m a twin. And my mom’s favorite line, I lost both my parents now, but my mom’s favorite line was, I raised one kid to save the world, and I raised one kid that is going to take over the world. And it’s very funny because he is very money oriented, and he’s an artist, ironically, and is a brilliant artist, and is a commercial artist and is a techie and all those things. And, um, has done. He wanted to be a millionaire by 25, and that probably happened for him, and I will never see that. And we are as close as can be, but couldn’t be more different in how we go about life. And his thing to me a couple of weeks ago is he’s like, can you please make some more money? He goes, make as much money as you can and then give it all away. Uh, that’s what I hope for you is, sherry, like, make your money, because I’ve been offered lots of different opportunities, and I’m like, that feels like, again, I didn’t grow up with stocks and investments, and how do you make the most? And my kids now are because they married people who, ironically, grew up much poorer than they did. One’s an immigrant, one’s mom of five, very poor, but they’re brilliant because they care. Exactly. In a very different way, because they did go through what you said of like, I wish I could have. I wanted those pair of shoes. I wanted to go to that camp. I wanted. And so they’re making sure, one, that they have those opportunities, and two, by gosh, their kids are not going to go without having what they think is at least as important. Right?

Jonathan DeYoe: There’s this element of, and we’re going to wrap here in a second, but there’s this element of, you desire it, you desire it, you desire it, you build it, you get there, you’re fine, your kids are fine. But there’s this thing in the back of your head that goes, we’re not fine, we’re not fine. It’s going to go away. We’re going to lose it. It’s going to go away. And getting rid of that, I think the way to get rid of that is actually start giving it away. And so if you rise out of poverty and you become wealthy or well to do at all.

Sherry Smith: Mhm.

Jonathan DeYoe: And you somehow separate yourself from community after that, then you’ll never, ever be happy. You will never ever feel like, I’m going to be safe and be okay. The key is to get there and then to turn around and say, this is my community. I’m going to help build up this community. And so I think in Berkeley you have a little bit of this unique, maybe not so unique, maybe it’s just there’s people here that think this way and there’s probably people everywhere that think this way. But the idea, hey, what can we do for these kids that don’t have the same role model, don’t have the same belief in their own ability, don’t have the same, but who are dedicated and are smart and who really want to excel, whatever that looks like for them. I have one. Well, uh, it’s more than just one, but if you’re talking to a high school student and they’re just heading off to college, I want you to really, I ask every guest to do this right, really make it simple. You’re going to give them one piece of advice, just do this one thing your first year in college and this well set the stage. And then maybe there’s one other thing that they’re hearing about that they’re worried about that you just tell them, hey, just don’t worry about, let that go. Let that go. So one thing that do one thing.

Sherry Smith: Don’T worry about, I think one thing to do. And this gets tricky when you have a lot of things hanging over you that uh, creating fear, whether it be, uh, mostly money, but try something new. Go out and meet other people on your floor. Join that club, go watch. You didn’t even know that hockey was a sport. Go do something that you just really have no idea what that is. Just to get your mind and your juices flowing of like, oh, wow, didn’t know that, uh, existed. Right. So particularly for our kids, you have to go very far to do that. So for me it’s like, take those risks, like find, got to be smart in your risk, I think, take that risk. And the thing not to worry about for me, and again, easier said than done in this is really not worrying about your major. Take the time to find what you really love. Because if you want something, it doesn’t become so much about work, but it becomes about how do I fit into community, how do I make my community and life better. So find that because you’re willing to work hard at that versus, oh, well, that’s going to make a lot of money, or my mom said that dad to do this or my uncle’s doing this, or I’ve got this. I mean, there’s some things that you’re going to probably just do because that’s what you know. But if you really take the time to find out what’s that thing that both stimulates you but also in your heart, you’re just like, I love waking up doing that every day because you can probably find a way to make a living doing that thing. It might take a little bit of time and might be trickier and not an easy path if you don’t want to be these labels of engineer, doctor, lawyer, teacher. But the world is so full of opportunities. It’s like, don’t be afraid to dream and look at what that is. And then put people in your camp that can help you actually figure out a multitude of pathways, not one. That’s why we have at least two paths. I wish we had ten. That you can actually maybe create that in your mind and then on paper and then maybe put the steps to do that. One of my favorite books is the startup of you, and um, I like to give that to every one of our college graduates, because it’s not about reinventing yourself for work, it’s reinventing yourself for you and figuring out how do you see who you are. And I love it because the way it is, like read this chapter, and then it has a bunch of things to do today, a bunch of things to do in a month, a bunch of things to do in a year. And it says, don’t go into the next chapter until you’ve done these things. So it’s like, in essence, you should take a year or two to read this book. Most of us, I went through the whole thing. It was fascinating. But I even have our staff stop and think about how do you recreate yourself every day for you? And that you actually becomes, how do I become a better person for my community?

Jonathan DeYoe: I’m just going to. A little quick aside here. There’s this exercise that I do, and if you just think about it, every single night we go to bed, we package up our insecurities and our mental self attacking, and we put it in a little package, and we put it next to the bed. Then we go to bed and we sleep and we dream, and we have thoughts that are unlimited. And then we wake up in the morning and we grab that package of stuff. Uh, and we put it back on. So one of the exercises is maybe not put one of those things back on, maybe just leave one of those things next to the bed. Let it dissolve for the day. Because at the end of the day, there’s limitations out there, but many of those limitations are in here. And how do we get rid of those limitations? That’s the hardest part, in my estimation. It’s like, how do you get rid of the stuff that you tell yourself you can’t do?

Sherry Smith: Well, um, on the flip side of that, the thing, and I would say, my kids do this, and I wish I had done this. Even with them, every day they put a piece of paper in the morning when they wake up in a gratitude jar. What am I grateful for? And, uh, every December 31, they actually read all 365 of those together, the two couples. And it’s, wow. That’s right. So just think, if we had every single kid in this country do that at night and that in the morning, what a different place we would live in.

Jonathan DeYoe: Gigantic change Hazer. So we don’t know who’s listening. This is going to go out in two, three weeks. We don’t know who’s going to be listening. What do you need at Berkeley community scholars?

Sherry Smith: Well, our dream is to help all 125 kids who graduate from Berkeley High each year that fall into those three categories. Right? Lowest economic, first generation, underrepresented. And right now, we can serve somewhere between 30 and 35. So I wish we could say we could do this for free. But college isn’t free, and paying my staff isn’t free. We’re not all won. Otherwise, I couldn’t live here. Right. So we need to raise one and a half million dollars every year. And I’m finding each year it’s harder and harder. This year, we’re almost a quarter of a million dollars short, which is why we can’t select all the students that we’d like to. So that’s a huge one. And I won’t say it’s an easy one, but for people with means, it’s like, your extra ten grand makes a huge difference for us. Your extra 20 supports a kid all the way through our program, so those things matter. But other than that, can you mentor a kid? Can you talk to a kid once a month and share some of the things that we just shared today? Can you be on a panel? We do these career workshops, and you sit down and you tell the kids a story, not as necessarily long winded as we did, but can you just say, where’d you start? How’d you get there? What do you like most about your job? Or can you let a kid job shout for a year, for a day? What does it really mean to do that kind of job? Don’t really know. Can you help me? So there’s multitudes of, from the very easy to the little bit more complicated to the, like, you want to dive in and really be part of our team, then let us know and we can find the spice for you.

Jonathan DeYoe: Great. And then how do people reach out and say, hey, someone wants to volunteer. Someone wants to be a mentor. How do they find you? Where do they find you?

Sherry Smith: So it’s just our website, www.berkeleyscholars.org, and there’s a place for volunteering, a place for mentoring. All of our emails are right there. Mine’s fairly easy. It’s sherry at, uh, berkeleyscholars.org. I answer my email literally every day. I’m a little crazy about that. I do not go to bed with that email in particular, uh, without having at least responded to all of them. So I pretty much commit myself to that. So I’ll get back to you, even if I have to say, like, oh, gosh, this week’s crazy. I’ll talk to you on Monday. You’ll hear from me.

Jonathan DeYoe: That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing all that. One last thing, and we just want to loop back to the personal. And so what’s the last thing you changed your mind about?

Sherry Smith: What’s the last thing I changed my mind about probably what am I going to do this afternoon? Like, after doing that, do I take a break and read a novel because I just want to unplug? Or do I go clean some part of my house since I’m working at home today?

Jonathan DeYoe: I don’t know if that’s a changing of the mind or if that’s scatterbrained. I don’t know which one is that.

Sherry Smith: Yeah.

Jonathan DeYoe: Sherry, thank you so much for coming on. All that stuff’s going to in be the show notes. I really appreciate. You, uh, know those folks who are listening. Go check out Berkeley community scholars, especially if you’re a local Berkeley, Oakland Richmond resident and have skin in the game here. I appreciate it. Thanks very much.

Sherry Smith: Sherry, thank you so much.