Olivia Coates noticed her fellow freshmen classmates struggling while recalling how her father showed her a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation on finances when she was 8 years old.
“They were out of their parents’ house for the first time, trying to manage their finances by themselves,” said Coates, a Grand Canyon University financial planning student. “They were winging it once they got money, hoping it would last them through the semester.”
Enter Money Mentors.
This financial coaching program, which started in September 2025, provides GCU students with peer-to-peer personal finance coaching led by six students vetted by program director Dr. Carolyn John-Carbon.
“We are in the business of financial wellness,” John-Carbon said.
The mentors – Paige Prentice, Colin Trang, Ella Turner, Brody Shepherd, Derek Criddle and Coates – will provide general financial wellness guidance in earnings analysis, spending and budget management, savings strategies, credit and debt education, asset protection education, and general financial tools and resources.
The mentors also will offer faith-driven guidance involving the handling of debt wisely, building a budget that fits one’s life, boosting credit scores and growing capital.
“Most of the students do not realize that it's not all about taking out a life insurance when we mention protecting your assets. You are the human capital,” John-Carbon said. “It's your potential right now: living, going to college and graduating. Your potential to earn an income.
“How do you protect that? How do you maintain that? How do you grow that?”
The program started thanks to the support of seven donors, including the Charles Schwab Foundation and Charlie Maxwell, co-founder and co-chairman of Cresset Capital. The Colangelo College of Business supplied office space on the first floor to accommodate mentors and clients, who can make an appointment through a QR code. The space will open officially with a ribbon cutting at 10 a.m. Nov. 18.
“I'm super excited about just providing a baseline financial mentoring program for our students and our staff,” business college Dean John Kaites said. “So anybody could come and sit down with our trained student workers and understand how to get their finances in shape to live a prosperous life as God intended.”
None of the six mentors are licensed to provide advice or steer clients toward a specific direction. The guardrails for the operation are based on confidentiality, terms of use and client engagement policies, which have been vetted by GCU’s legal team to ensure that coaches provide guidance instead of advice.
“Anything discussed in the meeting stays in the meeting,” John-Carbon said. “This is why we have private rooms when we engage with any of our clients. It's a must.”
The mentors seek to make the clients feel better or at ease about a predicament, such as surpassing their credit card limit or being unable to make their credit card payments or concerns about paying their next tuition bill.
Enabling a student to discuss his or her problems while receiving guidance enables them to identify with those students on a peer-to-peer level.
Shepherd, a junior finance major with an emphasis in financial planning, relished the opportunity to assist fellow students with a faith component.
“The Bible talks about money relentlessly,” Shepherd said. “It doesn't say that money is innately bad, but the love of money is. And I think it's our responsibility as Christians to righteously steward our relationship with money in the way that the world is going to see it.”
Getting selected by John-Carbon or even being a student in one of her classes did not guarantee a spot as a mentor, as senior finance major Colin Trang recalls.
“I went through two rounds of interviews,” Trang said. “But they weren’t get-to-know-you questions. It was more situational, like ‘a student walks in super stressed out and is $3,000 in credit card debt. How do you approach that?’
“There were questions like that, so that you really can see the more behavioral side and how much you can apply this financial education that you're learning in school to a real client.”
Serving as a peer financial coach to fellow students represents the latest in a series of stepping stones for Trang, who envisioned being a financial planner since the eighth grade. He was part of GCU’s Student Management Investment Fund team and the Finance and Economics Club, but “truly this one spoke to me because this is the only experience in college where I get to sit one-on-one with a client and talk finances.”
“I like working with people who are struggling a little bit, just because you can bring them to financial security so that they can pursue what they want to in life,” Trang said. “Also, the people who are doing OK. We get to have fun (and ask), ‘Do you consider investing? Do you want to know what that looks like?’ Or you get to hear about their dreams and how they can prepare for the future instead of preparing for now.”
This experience also cannot hurt Trang’s job prospects after he graduates in December. He recently took the Securities Industry Essentials (SIE) exam and plans to take the Series 66 test, which would qualify him to serve as a securities agent and as an investment adviser.
“They're going to be pretty well prepared when they graduate from here," John-Carbon said of the Money Mentors, adding how the program also is "doing a service to the students seeking help."
“According to the coaches, recruiters want to talk about their experience as a financial coach. So it means that the program makes coaches more marketable to potential employers.”
Clients will be asked to complete an exit survey to determine whether their needs, such as feeling better about their financial wellness and confidence in making financial decisions, were fulfilled. And they will be asked about the skills of the mentors and whether they would refer the program to others.
Parker Ellis, a senior finance major, said he benefited after attending a recent meeting in which Turner presented trivia questions, such as “What does APR stand for?” and “Which factor has the greatest impact on a FICO score?”
“Colin has been a friend since middle school (in Vancouver, Washington), and he’s been giving me a lot of tips on how to manage money, put it in good savings accounts with high yields,” Ellis said.
The program has big ambitions: to have a Money Mentors office at each of GCU’s colleges.
“We can say that most (Colangelo College of Business) students know something about personal finance,” John-Carbon said. “However, a theology student may not. A social sciences student may not. A nursing student may not. So the need is greater out there than it is within the (college). Our goal, as we scale the program, is to eventually have an office or one room in every college so that we are present, so that they see us on campus.”
Plans are in the works to expand the program in a year to online students.
GCU News senior writer Mark Gonzales can be reached at [email protected]
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