In the face of COVID-19, there is more of an expectation that financial coaches need to understand and navigate benefits than ever before. Many coaches avoid having conversations about cliffs because they can't tell if or when it will happen, and they have no solutions to offer. Our calculator can help coaches in surfacing eligibility, determining benefits cliffs, predicting future earnings and benefits impact, and predicting post-unemployment benefits and financial effects. In a post-COVID-19 world, many more working families will be utilizing public benefits as they re-enter the workforce, and our partners want to get prepared with the calculator to thoughtfully navigate and steer those conversations. Similarly, when re-hiring comes back on line for employers, benefits fluency and the ability to offer useful solutions to workers will become increasingly more of a requirement. COVID-19 has created a quick and dramatic upskilling of understanding that benefits are actual compensation and employers are seeing how many workers are weighing their options. Our financial solution will allow people to create the beginnings of a financial cushion that they've traditionally been kept from starting, as well as create a pathway off of benefits that "does no harm" along the way. Our financial solution frees people from being trapped at a cliff, forever sitting in a narrow box of benefits that barely keeps them going and no job advancement to ensure that they keep those benefits.

Recovery - we're positioned to support in the recovery of those directly affected.,Response - we're responding directly to issues caused or exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak.

I have a market-ready product/service. I could sell it to customers

Leap Fund was developed during the Blue Ridge Labs @ Robin Hood Fellowship. Designed in conjunction with those most impacted, we have built support networks necessary to help this idea scale. The team’s strengths include: user centered / human centered design, financial coaching expertise, front and backend engineering, and agile, iterative processes. Karen Schoellkopf, Founder and CEO, is a strategist and end-to-end product lead. She’s worked on projects for Samsung, Target, and the American Medical Association. She led Product at VoteRunLead, and was an early hire at Harvest (invoicing & time tracking software) and Justworks (payroll, compliance, & benefits software). She received an MFA from SVA, and a BA from Binghamton University. Karen worked for 10 years in the arts, where her full-time wages hovered right above the poverty line. She left the industry crawling out debt, having taken out loans over 2 years to pay off high state & federal self-employment taxes. Karen knows what it’s like to work hard, and not only not get ahead, but wind up further behind than when you started. In this country, we glorify the story of the American Dream: that if you work hard, you will “make it,” but for many Americans, that story is a fairy tale.

USA

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