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Name: Gladys E. Martinez
Title: Branch Manager, Reading Cooperative Bank
Age: 46
Experience: 30 years
Gladys Martinez entered the banking world as a part-time teller fresh out of high school. She never intended to become a banker, but as she started to excel at it, she found that she really enjoyed it. The real draw for her was working with people and helping them manage their financial lives. It’s that passion for helping people that made her a natural fit to lead Reading Cooperative’s latest financial literacy efforts at Lawrence High School.
Q: Give B&T’s readers the scoop on what Reading Cooperative has been doing at Lawrence High School.
A: We have this fantastic program that I am super passionate about. The program is a financial literacy program, but it has a little bit of a different flair. Each week, we go in and teach the kids about different subjects. Obviously, regular banking, but also how to buy a car, what to look for in insurance, credit cards, how do you get yourself in trouble, how to understand it, how to build your credit, how to finance college, how to create a budget, the things to plan for when you live on your own.
The goal of this program is to give these kids as many tools as possible to live an adult life maybe a little bit better than we did. That’s what we’re doing at the Lawrence High School. What I love about the program is, it’s not me going in teaching a class every single week. It’s different volunteers from the bank who are coming in, different professionals every day. One of our directors owns an insurance company, and he came in and talked about car insurance – what to look for and what to do and how to save money, the pitfalls and the successes, experiences that I would not be able to give the kids.
At the end of the session, we asked the kids what they liked most and one of the things they rated the highest was experience. They loved hearing the stories. What the kids want to hear is, what happened to you and how did you get out of it? And that’s what we’re giving them, real tips and life experiences to empower them to make their own choices.
Q: How does this tie into your efforts to reach the unbanked and some of those more financially vulnerable populations?
A: We have found that in our market, Andover and Lawrence are two very, very different markets. There’s a really big population of unbanked people in the city of Lawrence and Reading Cooperative is interested in how we can help in our community, as a community bank, to better that. And Lawrence High School is one way. We looked at that and said, this is what we can do to empower these kids who are already helping their parents, empower them with the knowledge they need to help their parents make good decisions and help them turn around and become banked.
What we’re finding is, there are all these ideas and all these misconceptions – you know, “My friend told my mom that she lost money because she used a debit card to buy something online and debit cards are bad,” so the mom tells the kid and the kids tell each other, and we’ll talk about it in class and the girl will say, “My mom told me that debit cards are bad and we do not use debit cards.” There are all these preconceived ideas that really keep these people unbanked. Our hope is that we’re going to break that cycles and say, “No, this is not true and this is how you can avoid those pitfalls.”
There are all these ideas that are incorrect and what are holding them back from being able to step up and do other things. We’re hoping to be able to touch the kids and eventually the parents.
And a really exciting thing that happened this week. … The principal came up to me and said, “Ask [a student] what happened this week.” So I said, “OK, what happened?” and she said, “I told my parents everything you said, and I told them that all those debit card stories aren’t true and that they don’t have to be afraid.” So she is giving them that information to help empower them, which is exactly what we want to do. I was super, super excited. The principal couldn’t wait to tell me … I love it. We really feel like, the more kids that we touch, we believe the bigger impact we’ll have in that unbanked population.
Q: What’s next for the program?
A: Our agenda really is to build the program. We would probably love to have a high school branch, that’s just something that’s been kicked around. I do love the market of Lawrence and it’s a market that we would love to explore. I know [President and CEO Julieann Thurlow] is passionate about that, too. So we’re just seeing how this builds up.
If you are living in a market that’s unbanked, you’re not going to be taught how to balance a checking account or how to apply for a credit card. It’s all education and that’s why financial literacy is such a passion of mine because I know it can change people’s lives. In any market, I think financial literacy is amazing.
The Top Five Crops Martinez Is Planting This Year:
- Garlic
- Potatoes
- Tomatoes
- Zucchini
- Cucumbers
