UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Julie Heaton joined the Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center as its new director in May.
Heaton follows Daad Rizk, who was the center's first director when it opened in 2017. Rizk retired this spring after decades of working with students and their finances at Penn State and Georgia Southern University.
The Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center began as the Financial Literacy Center and was endowed in 2018 by Penn State alumni and longtime University supporters Rick and Susan Sokolov. The center serves the entire Penn State community and provides hundreds of financial literacy presentations to groups and classes each year, as well as twice-monthly public webinars. It also provides one-on-one counseling, a mentorship program, and the self-study curriculum “MoneyCounts: A Financial Literacy Series Self-Study Modules.”
“We’re excited to have Julie at the helm of Penn State's financial literacy efforts,” said Yvonne Gaudelius, vice president and dean for Undergraduate Education. “It’s crucial that our students and the greater Penn State community understand how their finances impact their overall wellness and happiness. Julie brings a great mix of experience in counseling, education and management.”
Heaton said she is looking forward to continuing to grow the rapidly expanding presence of the Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center and is so far impressed with how well developed it is and how many collaborative partnerships have already been established.
“There’s always room for innovation, and there are tons of things that I want to expand on, but it's such a treat to come into something that is functioning so well,” Heaton said.
Most recently, Heaton was the director of the University of Montana Financial Education Program, which, like Penn State’s Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center, is consistently ranked among the top 50 higher education financial literacy programs in a yearly survey by LendEDU.
Heaton earned her bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and worked there after college as a grant coordinator. She was later a foreign language instructor for students learning English as a second language at Hebei Vocational College of Foreign Languages.
In 2013, Heaton took to the wilderness for a journey in environmental education that saw her first as a backcountry naturalist and educator for the Appalachian Mountain Club in White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire. Then, she worked a series of seasonal jobs that took her across the country as an outdoor educator in Montana and interpretive ranger for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreational Area in California.
She worked for a wilderness therapy program, managing the daily operations of an addiction rehabilitation center and adult therapeutic program. This role, she said, was an intersection of environmental education, human services and therapy. This led to a position as a community education coordinator in a nonprofit focused on education and support for domestic violence survivors. During her work there, she said she spent a lot of time helping survivors get back on their feet.
“A big piece of that is financial,” she said. “A lot of times, financial abuse is present in any kind of relationship dynamic that’s abusive.”
Her interest was piqued in financial counseling, and she said her work helped her see that financial literacy was a key part of helping people live healthy lives. She became an Accredited Financial Counselor through the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education. She also earned a master’s degree in public administration and policy and a graduate certificate in public health administration, both from the University of Montana.
“What's amazing about money is that we all have to deal with it, and once you understand a financial skill, the barriers to implementing it are low,” she said. “Almost everyone could benefit from sitting down with a financial counselor. Everyone has something they could improve.”
Heaton lives in State College with her husband, Joe, and daughter, Sylva. While she still loves Montana, joining Penn State and moving to State College offered a chance to be closer to family in the eastern U.S., she said.
The Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center is part of Penn State Undergraduate Education.