From FAFSA to Future: How College & Career Options is Changing Lives in the North State

Redding is a beautiful place. We have national parks in three different directions, two world-class lakes. This is a sportsman's paradise, but it's also full of wonderful people. We have business leaders, community leaders, faith-based leaders, all of them working towards a singular goal, and that's to make this a great place to live. I wanted to showcase these people, give their perception of the place that they call home. This is All Redding.

Brad Williams, welcome to the All Redding Podcast.

All right, thank you Griff, glad to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

It's good to have you here. Give you a brief introduction. You are the Director of Financial Aid Services at College and Career Options. You previously served as the Vice President at Simpson University, or excuse me, Simpson College and later Simpson University. You have an engineering background and you know something about tanks. You're also husband to Mary Kay, father of three grown men and grandfather of seven. Doing good so far?

Yes, yes, yes.

While there's no official statistics, you may also be the longest-serving marriage mentor in all of human history, in that we met when you and Mary Kay were the marriage mentors for my wife and I when we were still just engaged and going through our church's premarital program. Twenty-two years later, much to my wife's all-too-frequent dismay, you continue to serve as a mentor, friend, and occasional golf buddy.

I can't believe 22 years, Griff. Holy moly.

The guy who shaves my face can believe that it's been 20 — I don't shave as much obviously as I used to — but yeah, 22 years.

We enjoyed that work, that ministry, and particularly great to meet you and Norena and then maintain our friendship. It's been fantastic.

Yeah, we couldn't be more grateful for you guys in our lives. So I noticed on your bio for College and Career Options that you mentioned, of course, your love for your wife and for your children, but particularly your love for your grandchildren. And when you were a brand new grandfather, you said to me that grandchildren are God's reward for not eating your young. There you go. Still true?

It's still true. Okay. Great season of life, great season of life. Fantastic. Just to watch them, their innocence, their newness about everything, their cuteness — yeah, it's incredible.

I enjoy that we have kids of all ages, as you know, from 20s down to not yet nine. And I came home yesterday — the name's escaping me, but the scientists who study bugs, and you know, they'll see the bugs will be pinned out in a scientific way. Yesterday our youngest had collected a number of dead things around our property. So there was a dead bullfrog, several dead lizards. He did not have the delicate pinning — he used my staple gun to hold him to a piece of wood — but he was so excited to show me when I got home. He's a boy. Yeah, he's all boy. And my wife hates frogs, terrified of frogs. It's her thing. He tried to bring it in the house, that went poorly for him.

Well played.

Yeah, right. Okay, so let's talk about your background a little bit before we get into College and Career Options. You are not a Shasta County native.

Correct, Pennsylvania native. Several generation Pennsylvania native, York County, which is South Central Pennsylvania. Yeah, I grew up there, went to Penn State for my undergraduate degree in engineering, and then got an MBA and followed more of a management path later from the local college, private college there, York College of Pennsylvania. And then we found our way to Redding, California — which I never knew existed — in 1996.

Okay, so how does a Nittany Lion find their way all the way to a place you didn't even know existed?

Yeah, that's a great question. I was working in the defense business — you alluded to that earlier when you mentioned tanks. We're not talking about gas tanks or propane tanks, right? These are the ones that run on tracks, and although I didn't actually work on the vehicle called a tank, I worked on armored equipment that has tracks, so a lot of people refer to them as tanks, and I would refer to them as tanks just so people know what they're talking about. But anyway, I was in that business and we became part of a church in York, part of a Christian Missionary Alliance Church in York. There's a lot of Christian Missionary Alliance churches in Redding, by the way, and became a member of the governing board there. The pastor there, and this was the late 80s when we went to that church, and the pastor there was Jim Grant, Dr. Jim Grant, who was called here to Redding in 1993 to become the president of Simpson College. And Jim and I had created a friendship. I loved him. He appreciated, I think, the work that I was doing on his governing board, saw a young guy with potential perhaps, and I was actually looking for a career change. I was kind of in a niche market business, you might imagine. That work that I was doing in a defense business is kind of a niche. I didn't want to continue to work in a defense business, and he offered, invited us to come out, and long story short, in April of 1996, like 30 years ago, found our way here to become a vice president at then Simpson College, now Simpson University.

Yeah, that would be a pretty niche business. I think I'd like to own a tank, but other than me and the government, I don't think you have a lot of customers.

Yeah, well, we would say we were helping keep the free world safe, so we take as many customers as we could that the State Department would allow us to sell to. Our products are typically U.S. Army.

Now, a cool product line. I mean, cool product line. So, about that product line, isn't there a news clip out there that shows that product line in action, maybe in Iraq, if the story?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that equipment is all over the place, but probably the most famous one — at least the one that I participated in, at least in some small part — was in 2003. You may recall, in Baghdad, in the Iraq War, the statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down. Locals first attempted to pull that statue down, but they couldn't get it down, so the U.S. troops that were nearby in a piece of equipment called the M88A2, medium recovery vehicle — more than you ever wanted to know, Griff — were nearby, and it's a recovery vehicle, has a hoist and a winch, and can do a whole lot of things. They said, we can help, so they attached that winch line around the statue and pulled that statue down. So I've got a poster, an artist rendering actually of that action taking place, and my tie to that is in the late 80s I was a project manager on that piece of equipment when we were moving it from an M88A1 to an M88A2, making the improvements to that. Yeah, that's a unique story. I don't expect you're getting a podcast guest with that kind of a story very often.

I think I've identified a story arc in your career — all of them are replete with acronyms.

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

Defense contracting to higher education and now to funding for higher education. You don't use any actual words, right? We love acronyms. Okay, so then let's talk, because one of the goals of the All Redding Podcast is to bring knowledge and awareness to cool people, cool organizations that are doing great things in our community. So, you have a wife — were the boys born here or were they born in Pennsylvania?

No, they were born in Pennsylvania. They were 12, 10, and 7 when we brought them 3,000 miles away from their grandparents.

And so you've stayed for 30 years — tell me what it's like raising a family in the North State and what's keeping the family in the North State.

Yeah, we loved it here. We had to adjust to it, I will say that. The heat of the summer, the brownness, which we weren't used to, fences, which we weren't used to.

No fences in Pennsylvania?

No fences between yards. Houses are closer together here than back there. So, anyway, we had some things to adjust to, but my wife and I determined we were going to be on an adventure and we'd see how it goes and give it two years. And nobody from our family had ever left our county. Most people in that county stay there. So we were taking an adventure, a 3,000 mile journey to the other side of the United States. I told you before, we on the East Coast make fun of people in California, right, and all the things that are going on. I never heard of Redding, California. I've heard of Reading, Pennsylvania. And the Reading Railroad on the Monopoly board. And so we came, and of course we said we were going to give it two years and see how it goes — and then 30 years later, we're here. When our boys were 12, 10, and 7, as I've said, and they've become Californians. We couldn't believe when we got ourselves a California license plate. That seemed very weird to us, but we've really enjoyed it here. The community has been great. The people have been great. The ability to engage in the community and kind of open arms for anybody that's looking to be able to help and assist, whether that's a nonprofit organization or any kind of organization that might be looking for help. And so we've done that, we've jumped into that. Our kids played a lot of sports. I coached a lot of sports. You get to know a lot of people. You can make great friendships through those kind of things. And so that helped us to adjust as well. They had some great coaches. They had some great teachers. Two of our boys went off to college in Southern California. Our third boy went to work in Chico and we thought, you know, they're in their 20s, they're off exploring, they're doing their own thing, and they're probably not coming back. They've all returned. They're all in Redding. They love it here. We love it here. They found wives here, two of them. And of course now they're here, our grandkids are here. And we're not leaving. The family is the most important thing to us and God has blessed us with an incredible family and we're just grateful. We recognize that. We don't take it for granted. We're very grateful.

Grateful to be here. And in a full circle way, your son is my son's football coach.

Yes, my grandson and your son are on the same football team and my son is the coach of that team.

Yeah. It's very cool. Super cool. I'm going to have to talk to him about being called the Cornhuskers but wearing Miami Dolphins colors, but that's probably above the coaching level.

Penn State Nittany Lion does not like that name.

Yeah, Nebraska Cornhuskers. I mentioned to you at the last game that I grew up rooting for the Cornhuskers and I don't think you stood close to me anymore.

I don't talk to you anymore. It's good we had this on the books.

Right, yeah, last chance. So there's a story that I know privately but I hope you'll share it here, because one of the things about the North State is — yeah, you're right, July and August, they're warm, they're tough — but on the other hand, if you just look up and see what's around you, it's not like other places. Living at the end of the valley with the 11,000-foot peak to the east, a 14,000-foot peak to the north, and this is Mary Kay's story, but how did Mary Kay decide to celebrate her most recent milestone birthday?

Yeah, so great question. By the way, the outdoor life here — Lassen, Mount Shasta, the lakes — fantastic. When she turned 60, she determined she wanted to do something to prove she was still physically active, physically fit, could do things. She loves hiking, she loves kayaking. I'm not so much on either. She drags me along to hike and then I can barely keep up with her, but that's okay, that's fine. And so she determined we were going to do 60 hikes in the year that she turned 60. So we did it. We pulled it off. We did several of them in Utah while we were exploring the national parks, and then we did the majority of them here in Redding, but many of them in the Mount Shasta area, which we've learned a lot about the hiking trails up there. Found some ones we really like and go back to occasionally. And so she pulled it off. She was very excited about it. And I decided on that 60th hike — which I think was somewhere around Castle Crags, there was a waterfall there — when we got to that, I unveiled what I had made for her, which was a banner that said, "Congratulations — 60 hikes in 60 years," or something like that. It was pretty cool.

Yeah.

Is the banner up somewhere? No, we had it up for a while. I did insist that it go up on our house. She loved it. I mean, it was great to have been able to do something to recognize that. But it was pretty cool. Awesome for her too. It was great.

It was a great idea. And a testament that you could do so many of those hikes within anywhere from a 15-minute walk from your front door to an hour drive from your front door.

Yeah. Lassen, we love Lassen, hiking in Lassen too.

Yeah, that's such an unused resource around here.

No doubt.

I got myself in trouble on the last podcast. My guest was Dusty Robinson, who's a local running coach, and they moved from the city and talked about living intentionally outdoors. They wouldn't make a grocery list, they would make like an outdoor list, and they'd write it up on the chalkboard, and I was talking about how underutilized Lassen is, and my wife listened to it. She's like, yeah, it is. Let's go. So I'll be spending a fair amount of time in Lassen, I think, this spring and summer.

Yeah.

Okay, so as a guy who didn't really mature, I want to talk about tanks, but I know that you left the management of the development of these very cool pieces of equipment and you came to Simpson University. How long did you stay at Simpson?

20 years — Simpson University, '96 until 2016. I was Executive Vice President and CFO. Great run, great place. Enjoyed it, loved it.

Yeah, it's been an anchor for the community and higher education in the community for a long time. So after Simpson, that brings us to what was then College Options, am I right?

College Options then, yeah, and then College and Career Options now.

Okay. Why don't you tell me about College and Career Options — maybe the history of it and bring us forward.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So College and Career Options started — College Options at the time — started in the early 2000s. I give a lot of credit to our founder and current CEO, Leanne Richelieu. Leanne, a Shasta County native, multiple generation Shasta County native, Shasta High School grad, and she was working at the time with UC Davis on some of their TRIO programs, which are federal grants for low-income first-generation students. Maybe we want to talk more about that later, but I'll skip over the details for now to say that she wanted to be able to bring that work to the North State to be able to serve her community — and then selfishly, to be able to get her kids closer to their grandparents. And so she wrote a federal grant, and it was awarded for that work to be done in Shasta County. She came here with UC Davis, with an office on Market Street, in what used to be called the old schoolhouse — I think it used to be a toy store or toy shop, something like that.

Down there in what's now like the Market Street Promenade area.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so started there. UC Davis was still the administrative agent for that grant, and around that time, the McConnell Foundation had engaged with UCLA and someone named Dr. Patricia McDonough to do a study on why the college-going rate was low in the region. When I say region, McConnell serves — and we have served over the years — five counties: Tehama, Shasta, Siskiyou, Trinity, and Modoc. And that study was funded by the McConnell Foundation, and what they found out were three things that were holding students back in the region. One was geographic isolation — not much you can do about that. Two was access to financial aid and the financial need itself among the community. And the third was a lack of what's called A-to-G completion of classes in high school — A-to-G is the term used to describe a certain set of courses that need to be taken in order to qualify for admission to a University of California school. It's kind of the gold standard of college admission requirements. And those were the three things, and mostly, like I said, geographically, nothing you can do about that.

Right.

The course selections and completions was really a fallback to the schools, right, and for the superintendents to work on that, and they've done it, and the rates have improved. But financial aid was something where maybe something could be done. So McConnell, in their wisdom, trying to assist the community to find a way to get students access to a college education — or at least an after-high-school education, because education can change families, can change lives, can change communities. It's great for the standard of living for families, great for the standard of living of communities. And so they recognized that, and they started to fund — back then I think in 2004 — they started to fund College Options with McConnell Foundation money, and that allowed College Options to not just serve those federal grants, which are very limited in what they do and where the money can be used.

Is that those TRIO grants?

That's those TRIO grants, that's those TRIO grants.

So TRIO refers to three different programs?

In the early 1960s, when Congress created the TRIO programs and started to fund them, it referred to three programs — that's why they named it TRIO. It was Upward Bound, or UB; Educational Talent Search, or ETS; and then SSS, which is Student Support Services. Real quick word on each of those: ETS, Educational Talent Search, is for middle schools and high schools, and it puts an advisor in the schools, funded by the grant, to be able to assist a cohort of low-income first-generation students and advise them on what's available, how they can get there, what life after high school might look like, and help them with educational choices. Upward Bound, much the same — it's high school. They also have a summer component, a six-week summer component, and at least a week of that is residential. This year, the folks that are in our Upward Bound program are going to be spending a week at Sacramento State. They're going to go on some tours. I think they're going to tour Google, as a matter of fact. They've got some kind of an in to get into Google to take a tour. Amazing for the low-income first-generation kids coming from Fall River, Burney, Modoc, those kinds of places.

Yeah, being on a campus like that would be remarkable.

Unbelievable. I'd like to take that tour, actually. And then Student Support Services are at colleges — colleges have these federal grants as well to help low-income first-generation students persist through college. In our region, almost every high school in our five-county region is covered by one of these grants, and the administrative organizations for the grants are College of the Siskiyous, Shasta College, Simpson University, College and Career Options, and UC Davis.

UC Davis is still here.

UC Davis is still here in the area after the program that Leanne brought up years ago, and they take a big portion of the Educational Talent Search. One of the things really appreciated by students in the Upward Bound program is college campus tours. In fact, very timely that we're doing this today, Griff — we have four Upward Bound grants, and we have one Educational Talent Search grant. The schools we're serving with those grants right now are Modoc, Fall River, Burney, and Butte Valley in Doris. And there are 89 students who left today, this morning, headed to University of Nevada, Reno for a tour. Tomorrow they'll be at Lake Tahoe Community College for a tour discussion — what's it take to get here — and then on Saturday they'll be at Sac State doing much the same thing. Unbelievable opportunity that these kids would never get any other way. And what's the cost to the kids? Cost is zero. The grant is funded, which is fantastic. And for some of them, it's changed their perspective: I can get there. I see people that look like me. I see people that are maybe from my area that are on that campus. Pretty cool.

I had that experience when I went to university, just touring the campus and having my eyes open, and then my son — my wife and I are both college grads, so we had some idea about how to do this as we were guiding our son off to college, who's in college now — but when he went on his campus tour, he came back and it was just the coolest thing he'd ever seen. 30,000 young people in one place in a campus that was more akin to a city. And he was mostly a homeschool kid, so classroom was like the kitchen table. It was like, oh my gosh, it's amazing. So yeah, I can imagine those 89 kids coming home from a place like UNR. Although I think they're all going to want to go to Lake Tahoe Community College because, well, Tahoe. But yeah — no disrespect to the good people of Reno, but it ain't Tahoe. Okay, so College Options, at the time it was named that, starts with this TRIO grant, and then McConnell comes alongside and partners with College Options.

Exactly. Thank you, McConnell Foundation, for doing that — changing lives in the North State for the better.

20-plus years ago. So as College Options has grown, what's been some of the outreach and growth of the program?

Yeah, so the way that I got to College and Career Options after my 20 years at Simpson University was through their advisory board. The local colleges — Simpson being one of them — the local and regional offices of education for the five counties, the Union High School Districts, and business people to some extent all worked with Leanne on that advisory board. I had the Simpson seat, so I'd gotten to know Leanne, I'd gotten to know their work, I loved their work. In fact, I would host them at Simpson usually once a year for a lunch and talk about what we did, because I saw them as advocates for us as they were out in these high schools everywhere. So our service line, if I can call it that, over the years has increased to three primary things.

Okay.

The first one being academic support or academic preparation — primarily, am I taking the right courses? How do things look for me? If a student or a parent wants to understand that, now their counselors do a great job of that, so we don't get a whole lot of that, but we do get people asking for help with a college application essay or a scholarship essay. We won't write it for them — I always say we don't write it for you, but we have people that can edit it and help make it better, make it your own. That's the first. The second is career exploration, which is trying to use some tools to figure out where would I be good, what would my life be good for in a job, a career, a path, what should I study in school. And we lined up with an organization called YouScience — Y-O-U Science — and my colleague Dan Haskins became an expert on the career exploration area in general and also on YouScience. So we would administer these tools. Most career exploration survey tools only give you feedback on what you're interested in, so you kind of answer some questions to determine what you're interested in. This one adds that, but it also adds: what are you good at? What's your aptitude? How does your brain work? How are you wired? What works for you? You put those two together — interest plus aptitude, maybe even a little bit more heavily weighted on aptitude — and then you get a set of careers, what kind of schooling is required, what they pay annually, how many jobs are available in that field, whether it's going to be a growing field or not. So that's that. It's a great one. And then the last is financial aid, which is kind of the big thing.

We got to stop — I know where we're going, and I won't forget it. I brought an outline. Beyond a fan of YouScience. So, you know, as I indicated, my wife and I are both college grads, so we're not uninitiated when it comes to figuring out how to go to college, and the idea of college or career training was not foreign to us. But even for us as sort of experienced users of the college system, it was still a Gordian knot. I joked with you earlier — we had a key and we didn't know where the lock was. We didn't even know where the door was. But I knew a guy, so I called Brad, which is actually the genesis of why you're here — because everybody in this community, whether you're college-bound or career-bound, needs to know about the services of this organization. So we came in, we talked to you about YouScience, and so my son — who's now a sophomore at a 30,000-student university — went through the YouScience process with Dan, which was all covered by your organization and the funding organizations like McConnell and the Ford Family Foundation. He went through it, and there were a zillion different jobs that came up, color-coded — kind of like a stoplight, you know, green is go, yellow, be cautious, red, probably not for you. He ended up loving that process, and he'd always been interested in psychology. We did YouScience with Dan, and the full circle story is that his first major was in kind of the green-yellow range — low side of green or yellow — and that major was not for him. He then selected a different major in the yellow caution area — interest but not necessarily aptitude — and that wasn't for him either. He changed majors again, and now he's in his third major, but it's one that was in the bright green area of the YouScience results. He actually enjoys his classes. He calls and tells me about things he's learning and he's interested in. Now as a forensic psychology major, aptitude and interest are lining up. It's been great.

Yeah, it's a great story.

Yeah, completely my own experience, and part of why you're here. But on the YouScience topic — College and Career Options was originally administered through UC Davis, but it became its own nonprofit, right?

We did. 2017 became its own nonprofit, yes.

Okay, so that means that as a nonprofit, it's out there working hard to try and find funding. True?

Correct, correct.

So where does YouScience stand now?

The funding for YouScience actually ended at the end of last year, so we're in the throes of trying to find alternate funding for that. Such a great service. Families can still look it up online and do it on their own — they'll have to pay for it. All of our services are free, which I love, because of the kind funding of our funders, primarily the McConnell Foundation over the years and also the Ford Family Foundation in some recent years. But some of that funding is going away — foundations don't fund forever. They want you to become sustainable, and so Leanne, the CEO, and her board and others are working hard to find alternate funding to bring that back. Because it only entered our service line in 2017 or so — it's not something they did forever. Financial aid has kind of been from the very beginning of college options, but career exploration, no. But families have loved it. I said to Dan, I don't know why everybody in the five-county region isn't knocking down your door to be able to do this. Such a cool thing. You can still do it on your own, you just have to pay for it. And if we were to recommend a tool, we'd recommend it. The schools use a different tool, which is fine, and you can get that at your high school.

Well, if there's a listener or somebody connected with a potential funding source, a grant-writing organization, or a foundation listening right now, how would they contact College and Career Options?

Yeah, they're welcome to reach out to me if they would like. Phone number 530-768-5103 — that's my office phone number. I've got an incredibly long email address, but it's actually the best way to get me: B.Williams at collegeandcareeroptions.org — that's collegeandcareeroptions.org. I'll get you connected to the right person, but yeah, you never know, right?

Right. One of the people in the adult running group that I participate with had seen one of the All Redding podcast episodes, and it just — not something she was searching for, just the algorithm had fed it to her — and she really enjoyed the content. So you never know who's going to be watching or seeing. Great idea. Okay, so there's the academic support services, you know, college essays, direction for class selection, and those sorts of things. There's the aptitude analysis through YouScience, and then kind of the big thing — originally College Options, now College and Career Options — has been financial aid. Maybe before you go into the financial aid component, you can tell us about the name change.

Yeah, the name change happened — I lose track of time — maybe four years ago, something around that time frame. "College Options" was the name selected back in the day, and it kind of says something about what you're looking for, but all along from the very beginning, there was no desire to be exclusive in terms of helping students or families who were doing anything after high school to find a career, whether that be a tech school, trade school, whatever it might be. The name would imply that maybe those didn't fit with our services. So I think very wisely, the name was changed to College and Career Options, connoting more that we're working with anybody on any kind of a career — tech school, trade school, cosmetology, whatever it may be. And about the same time, there was more awareness of career technical education and a need for skills, the trades, which are in greatly in demand. So we joined in on that. We are encouragers, we are supporters, we are grateful for anybody coming out of high school who has a plan to do some kind of education, whatever that may be. And we'll help them with their academic planning, we'll help them with their career exploration, and we'll help them with their financial aid. There's financial aid available even for tech schools and trade schools.

The idea that there are literally millions of quote-unquote shovel-ready jobs — which maybe they don't actually operate a shovel — that aren't being taken out there. And I think people, sometimes my generation particularly, grew up thinking college is the only way. I can remember, and I still remind a dear friend of mine, when he dropped out of college to start a welding business, I said, oh man, you're going to ruin your life. Suffice it to say, it has not ruined his life. He has become an incredible business owner, takes care of his team, operates a business that does work statewide, and it's been a great way for him to take care of his employees, his staff, his family. So to those kids out there that don't want to sit behind a desk and want to work with their hands, work in a technical or industrial field, there are great options. I could prove it another way too — my business partner just got a bill from a local car dealership for some repairs, and the hourly rate was well above $200 an hour. And similarly got a bill from his plumber, also above $200 an hour. And I can tell you, professionally, that people are far more interested in an immediate response from their plumber than they are from their attorney. Super important jobs, not to be dismissed.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So then, now College and Career Options is making a point that the brand is about any sort of career path post-high school, whether it's further education or training. But that brings us to financial aid — how are people to get access to funding or learn about funding for their kids going off into the world?

Yeah, so that's what I was hired to do at College and Career Options back in 2016. I talk mostly about free money. Loans are considered part of financial aid — be aware of that. You may get a financial aid offer that includes loans. You want to sign up for loans? Great, I have no problem with that, but just do it consciously. There have been a lot of people over the years who signed up for everything that came to them in a financial aid offer, including loans. They didn't know they had loans until it came time to pay them back after they graduated. That's a bummer — accumulating four years of loans when you thought it was a gift. So from the standpoint of where that money comes from, there are three primary sources: the federal government, the state government, and the colleges themselves — they can give away their own money as well, free money. By the way, the State of California is the most generous state in the country when it comes to free money for students to go off to school. Even tech schools and trade schools have some money available. Over three billion — I think maybe 3.5 billion — annually given by the California Student Aid Commission.

Anecdotally, I can say that's true. I call — so like you have on speed dial the person that you call about the thing — and you're my guy on speed dial for anything educational, particularly financial aid. So I don't know if you recall this, but several months ago I called you about a young person in our lives at the time who was considering a move to Utah. She was making an apples-to-apples comparison of wages, but you also have to think about other things, like cost of living — rental costs, fuel costs, grocery costs — and she had a desire to go to school. So I had her figure out what the costs would be to attend community college in Utah, and then I called you, and you were like, no, no — 100%. It's not anywhere but California. It is by far the most generous state in the union in terms of funding, particularly for the first two years, but also going on further in education and trade schools.

Yeah, I remember that call, and I don't think I ever told you that she did make an appointment and I met with her and we talked through her options, which was for me delightful to be with her.

Yeah, and by the time we did a deeper level analysis of wage comparison, cost of living comparison, and educational cost comparison — Utah was a little less expensive for cost of living even with lower wages — but by the time you factored in education, it wasn't a close call anymore. Just the options for educational help in California.

Never pay back, right?

Nope. Yeah. Could not make that juice work out from the economic analysis. So what is your job, and how does helping families with the financial aid component of College and Career Options work?

Yeah, so a big part of it is communicating to high school counselors, training them to some extent when they're looking for it, working with the California Student Aid Commission, and kind of being their eyes and ears here. We have a small contract with them, actually, to represent the California Student Aid Commission in our five-county region. And I'm available for email consultation, for phone calls, for in-person visits in our office, for Zoom calls for people that are in distant parts of our region to be able to have financial aid questions answered. I had one right before I came over here today — a mother who called me about filling out a FAFSA. And the financial aid application is where all the financial aid process starts. It's either the FAFSA, if you're a U.S. citizen, or it's called the California Dream Act Application, or CADAA. If the student is not a citizen, they may be able to fill that out and get some aid. They can't get federal aid, but they can get state and school aid. A bulk of the work that I've done has been out in high schools. I'll be invited in to do workshops in the fall, typically presentations — this is what financial aid is, this is how you get it, these are the sources, these are the kinds of financial aid, let's take a look at what your student's eligible for, these are the income criteria for a federal grant, these are the income and asset criteria for a state grant. Let's talk about schools, let's talk about out-of-state — is there any way to get some discount pricing at out-of-state schools? And then what do I need to know to fill out my FAFSA or CADAA? I probably do 45 to 50 workshops a year in total, and I've done that kind of year over year.

Okay, my acronym-addicted friend — what is a FAFSA?

Oh yes, good for you. I'm glad you asked. Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

And why is that the gatekeeping document? Why does everybody have to do a FAFSA?

Yeah, everybody has to do a FAFSA in order to get — well, number one, free community college in California. All 116 California community colleges offer two years free. Some schools have different rules than Shasta College does, but I like the Shasta College rules. To qualify: you're a full-time student and you file a FAFSA. You're getting free tuition for two years.

That's it.

No income basis.

Half your college completed by filling out a document and by going to 12 units or more.

Greatest bargain in the United States of America. Try to name something else where you're investing in yourself and it costs you nothing to be able to do it.

My economics professor at Shasta College — also acronym-addicted — taught us TANSTAAFL: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. This might actually challenge that rule, that for two years you can go get your college education at no cost.

It's close. Yeah, it's close. It gets close.

Right. Okay, so for us as a family, when it came time for the same son I've been using as my example — I knew that we needed to do some process to even just be able to apply at schools, whether or not he was going to qualify for scholarships or grants. He's in the military, so he'd have benefits through the Army as well. But I knew I needed to do something, so I called you, and you told me everybody's got to do a FAFSA.

Yeah, that's my argument. I mean, there are some people that will say they're not going to do it for whatever reason. I've actually got a slide in my presentation with six points — compelling arguments for why I think you should fill out a FAFSA. Even if a family thinks their income or assets are too high, well, in order to qualify for federal loans — in case a student might want federal loans — if a student needs loans when they're a student, nothing better than a federal loan. They can get it on their own. They don't have to have a cosigner — great for parents. And the rates they're going to get, they're not going to get anywhere else. Banks aren't going to give them a loan without a cosigner typically. But even merit aid — merit aid is based on a talent or a skill, need-based aid is based on income level of the parents for federal and state free money. But even merit aid, which will come from the school based on talent or skill — a great musician, great artist, great academic, by the way students and parents, a lot of money out there for good students, a lot of money out there for good students. Don't give up on getting good grades. So you're a great musician, you do an audition, and the school says, we want to upgrade our music program, here's some free money — that's a music scholarship. Even though it's a merit scholarship, not based on your income, most schools in order to give merit aid will actually want a family to fill out a FAFSA.

Yeah, we had to. He got some merit aid based on his grades.

The logic of that makes sense. That school wants to be last dollar in — to meet that student's need, they don't want to give all their money away right up front. They want to be last dollar in. If a student can get money from the federal government for free that goes to the school, from the state for free that goes to the school, we're going to take that first and then see what's left. And rather than taking the word of somebody who says, I know we're not going to qualify for anything, they're going to say, well okay, fill out a FAFSA. So that's why they do it. Makes sense. They're last dollar in.

Yeah, the school can stretch its dollars further, stretches scholarship opportunities further. That makes sense. So who's the ideal customer, if you will, for College and Career Options?

Anybody — not just a high school student. Anyone in the five-county region that is looking to do any kind of educational pursuit and they need help, whatever that may be. Whether that's academic prep, career exploration, or financial aid support. Now, most of our clientele are students or parents of students. Parents are very interested because they may be putting up a good part of the bill. I tell families, when I do my financial aid presentation right up front, that financial aid and some of these other things — you talked about the Gordian knot — can be mysterious, complicated, confusing, even intimidating. I've had parents who've come to me and said, I haven't slept in three days because I know I'm going to get this wrong. And they believe that if they get it wrong, their child is doomed for the rest of their life. That's not true, but it feels that way. So I affirm them in all of that. No age limit to our services. Five-county region — friends, neighbors, anybody that needs those kinds of services can reach out to us.

Has College and Career Options tracked some of the impact it's had in the community over the last 20 years?

Yes, yes, as a matter of fact. Well, number one would be the impact of grant funding that's come in. In 2004, there was one federal TRIO grant being offered up here, worth $210,000. In 2022, over the course of time, there had been over $60 million — and I think that's probably up to maybe $65 or $70 million by now. That's outside money, federal money brought in to the community to help students here. And not only that, but it creates jobs. It's money coming in from an outside source. And having served about a thousand students in 2004, by now it's over 50,000 students or clients — not all students, parents as well — who have been served.

And why is that?

Free — free being the keyword.

We witnessed the FAFSA completion rate jump dramatically, where we were well below the state average. Now we're on par with the state average, which last year was about 65%. The state average is a good metric — we're in California, so pretty good metric. That makes us all feel good.

And counselors — high school counselors — very much get credit for a lot of that. Also, the FAFSA has gotten easier over the years. In the history of civilization, the FAFSA has never been easier than it is right now. Congratulations. And California is asking all seniors to fill out a FAFSA unless they opt out of it. So that's helped bump up the numbers as well. I'm not saying we're taking all the credit for that, but we were there with the counselors, with the state in their pushes to get FAFSA completions. We've also seen A-to-G rates increase — again, that's not all on us, but I think we were able to help some of that with our advisors through those federal grants. Students who otherwise wouldn't really know — remembering that low-income first-generation is the target audience.

And by first generation, you mean first generation to pursue education past high school?

Yeah — neither parent completed a four-year degree. That would be considered first generation. That's their definition.

Yeah. To some extent you're talking to a client here, because when you told us to fill out a FAFSA, I can remember sitting at my parents' kitchen table — it was paper, it was pencil, it was erasing, it was pages after pages, and we had to dig through documents. It was manual and it was extensive and it was awful. And so now I just get an email that says, your student has completed his or her portion of the FAFSA, you need to complete yours. I think I was done in five minutes. I mean it was just quick, it was simple, it was easy, and that resulted in him getting where he needed to go with his counselor at his university and getting everything taken care of for the remainder of sophomore year and into his junior year.

All your financial information just transfers right in from the IRS. Piece of cake.

I didn't need to know that. You know I'm paranoid. Why did you say that?

Well, yeah, a lot of people are. People don't even believe that.

I would have preferred ignorance there. Don't tell me anything else about that. Okay, but one of the things that would get lost in the weeds of the FAFSA completion rate — somebody's listening right now thinking, oh my gosh, shut up, that's boring — it's not. Because that study that was done that ultimately led Leanne to try and bring those services to the North State, and McConnell to fund, was this idea of getting information out there in this community to just say, go to school, and here's how you do it. That financial aid component is now on par with Newport Beach or San Diego or any other part of the state on average.

Yeah, across the state. The California Student Aid Commission tracks it — they actually report new numbers twice a week. They report to the high school counselors, and they know by name who has and who hasn't filled out a FAFSA, so they can do one-on-one counseling with those students to help them. That wasn't always the case, so very grateful for that. All our work has been free. Even the financial aid services work is a little bit in jeopardy of maybe being funded going forward. So again, that funder out there that wants to help — we want to make sure I express nothing but extreme, sincere gratitude to McConnell Foundation and also Ford Family Foundation out of Oregon. They've carried the load and allowed us to do what we do, to bring these services and serve so many in our community to help them change their lives through education. It's a fantastic feeling.

Yeah. 50,000 kids over the years — you're literally talking on average over the last 20 years of the organization, thousands of kids per year. And those are trajectory changes. You mentioned something when we were talking about you coming on today, about job satisfaction.

Oh yeah.

Why do you like your job?

Yeah, well, the financial aid component can be very confusing. I tell families, look, my number one goal here with you is to try and simplify the process and calm things down a bit. I get calls all the time — so-and-so told me to call you, you helped them, they were very confused, I'm very confused, help me. And so I can and I do, and they are extremely grateful, because I've unlocked something akin to nuclear fusion in their view — and I'm like, not even close, but I understand it can be confusing. So I'm helping them, which is very satisfying to me. They're grateful and let me know how grateful they are. I've had people in my office in tears because they realize what kind of financial aid they're going to be able to get and how it's going to change the life of their child. Kids typically don't cry in my office, but parents might, from time to time. To be able to do work that is affirming to me just on its face, and then get that kind of positive feedback — I'm not used to doing work for clients who are always happy with what you do. So it's been a great way to wrap up my career here in the near future. I love the organization. I love the work we do.

I'm putting you on the spot — this isn't something we talked about beforehand — but I'm wondering, since you've been with College and Career Options for about ten years, have you had the opportunity to see a kid, a family come in — a family like mine, like okay, how do we handle this, what do we do next — and then go all the way through and come back to you as a graduate or having completed their technical training or something along those lines?

I've had a few. Typically from a financial aid standpoint, I've had some come back for graduate programs — help me with undergraduate, help me now with graduate — and that happens occasionally. But from their standpoint, they are pretty much a veteran of the financial aid process by that point, so they've got it figured out. But yeah.

That makes sense, because our son going through it has paved the way for his younger sister who's starting to have those kinds of conversations with us now, and they have a younger brother who's several years away, but it just won't be mysterious anymore. And I think that was, for our family, the big thing — to demystify it. There's this joke I like about expertise. It's this old guy, he's the maintenance man at the town dam for like 40 years. He retired last year and a new guy's there. The floodwaters are coming, the rain keeps coming, and they've got to open the dam or the town's going to be destroyed. The new maintenance guy can't get the dam to open — the machine won't work. So he calls the old guy and says, I need you to come in, you've got to help me with this. And the old guy says, well I'm retired now but I do have a consultancy. He's like, whatever, it doesn't matter what it costs, we're going to lose the whole town. So the old guy comes in, he's carrying one tool — a hammer. He walks up to the machine, looks at a particular spot, hits it hard with the hammer, it sputters to life, the dam opens, the town is saved. The guy's like, oh my gosh, thank you. He's like, well, it's a thousand dollars. He's like, a thousand dollars? You swung your hammer one time. He's like, yeah — it's only a dollar for swinging the hammer, but it's $999 for knowing where to swing it. For me, although there was no charge — thank you, and don't send me a bill — but for me that was you. College and Career Options was like, okay, I don't know where — I need somebody to tell me where to swing the hammer. And now it is demystified. I got an email, five minutes later it was done and smooth sailing for another year.

Very cool.

Okay, so I know College and Career Options has some events that it takes part in. Say more about that.

Yes, yes, thank you. So in May each year we hold what's called Kinder College Day. I've been doing that for maybe 15 to 20 years — inviting kindergarten students from all over Shasta County to a day where we have people from all over the community who talk to these kindergarten students in groups. They bring in their class, and we've got stations set up. It's typically at Simpson University. A presenter will be at a station and talk about what they do — like if you came in as a lawyer, this is what I do, this is what my day looks like, this is why it's good to get a good education, listen to your teacher, those kinds of things. And mostly what the kids like most are the fire trucks and ambulances and police cars and the canine units, so the more we can have those kinds of things the better — or the helicopter if it happens to be there, or the veterinarian that brings a horse. It's exposing them to the career element, and we just think you can't do it too early. Siskiyou County has actually kind of copied our model and they do it there now. And it's just a lot of fun. It's being put together right now by our good friend Gordon DeWitt and he leads that effort. He's gathering presenters. I did that event for a number of years, turned it over to Gordon, and told him: for this event, if you don't have presenters, you don't have an event. The teachers are going to bring their kindergartners, but you need presenters. So he's recruiting presenters right now.

It's really pretty cool. For years you recruited me as a presenter and I always said no, so I don't think I got handed off on your list of potential presenters to Gordon. But I always said no for the worst possible reason — no five-year-old is going to be interested in the lawyer, because I have no badge, I have no dog, I have no horse, I have no fire truck. I just can't compete.

Fair point. Bring a gavel and bang it on the table occasionally.

I have a gavel that a friend of mine gave me and this gavel — I don't know why anybody ever created it, but it's enormous. Not an actual judge's gavel. If I brought that I might get some attention because it's kind of a wooden Thor's hammer looking thing. So that might do it.

I thought you were going to go where a former president of Simpson University, Larry McKinney, would always go. We always have the president of the university come out and speak, give a greeting — we just ask them to give three or five minutes like that. Larry was a Polish speaker and loved to do it. So this is my toughest audience — a thousand kindergartners or something like that.

I dressed with my youngest as Wolverine last year for Halloween — just cut the beard and the chops, Wolverine costume done. Maybe I'll dress as Wolverine and tell them I'm a lawyer but at least have their attention. You know, big claws.

Now they're going to want to go to law school.

Yeah, look at the claws the lawyers get. Okay, so there's the Kinder College event. What else?

College and Career Signing Day — which is not actually a College and Career Options event per se. It's actually run by Reach Higher Shasta, which is a county collaborative of business people and educators in the community. And someone from our organization has been the one that has led that each year, with the cooperation and funding support from Reach Higher Shasta and others. We take donations to help with that. And what we do is gather at Sequoia Middle School. This year I think it's May 11th at four o'clock, and the public is welcome. We'll invite — we're hoping to have about a hundred students come across the stage at Sequoia. Any student in Shasta County, a high school senior, who has outlined a plan for their education or career next year — military, tech school, trade school, community college, a university, in-state, out-of-state, wherever it may be. They go to the stage, they tell their name, we give them some swag from their school — typically a pennant, maybe a t-shirt — and they will say, this is what I'm going to study, this is what I'd like to be when I graduate from there. And we encourage the crowd to be as raucous as possible.

Right.

Which is not typically the case when you go to a high school event like graduation or something like that. It's just a joy, it's a delight — it's my favorite event of the year. And as part of that, we have recruited local community businesses to make a donation to allow us to give away, from each of those businesses, five $500 scholarships. So do the math: $2,500 allows you, as an organization, to get on stage for a minute, pitch your organization, talk to students, and then we draw names randomly. You're not writing an essay — students don't write an essay. All they have to do is show up, walk across stage, put their name card in a bag, we draw out of that bag, and we give away. Last year I think we gave away either $15,000 or $17,500 the day of in scholarships. And we are pledged to keep it to about an hour, no more than an hour, at Sequoia Middle School — and be as raucous as possible. We love it.

You're a sports guy, so signing day means something to you without explanation — signing day for kids who have committed to go off to a college, there's a table, they'll pick a hat, they'll pick a helmet, and it's a big deal when this D1 recruit picks Penn State, for example.

Taking my talents to Penn State.

Right, so this is an opportunity for kids that are going to go on in some form of education or another. I can tell you as a parent, when my son — who's now in college — was there as one of the representatives of his school, he didn't get his name drawn, but man, he was excited to be there, it was raucous, and it was a thing we just couldn't not get behind as a business. My business partner and I have supported the event last year and again this year, and it was great. The kids love it, the parents love it — it's $500 unexpected dollars to help defray moving costs, educational costs, transportation, all that stuff.

Yeah, you're right on. We modeled it after signing day for athletes — they get all the press, they get all the glory, they get all the pictures. Okay, that's fine, appropriately so, but we wanted to honor other students too, not just athletes. Sometimes we do have athletes that come through because they're going to a unique school or something like that, but we want to give the other students a chance to be recognized for making a plan, for having an idea of what they want to do. So they'll come in from Burney, Fall River, all the local schools, small schools, big schools, doesn't matter.

I don't know what year it was, but the kids from Burney were either like tearing all their cards or something because they got all...

Two years ago. Yeah. My joke from the platform that day was, we're going to have to have a Brink's truck to follow the people from Burney home. Yeah, there'll be other people following them for that money. Unbelievable.

Could not miss. Yeah, they're about a thousand. Okay, so there's Kinder College, there's College and Career Signing Day — any other events?

One more — College Quest. That is actually run by College and Career Options, and that's a college fair. We do that typically in October, and there's a date being solidified for that right now. Maybe this year it might be in September, but there'll be announcements coming out for that. I tell people it's going to be at Shasta College. Just cross town to come and see 20 colleges and universities, five military branches, and then we have some local organizations as well — maybe even more than 20 colleges and universities. They come from out-of-state, in-state, UCs, CSUs, community colleges, and they just set up a table and you walk through the room and talk to them if you want, gather information, talk about how much it costs, talk about financial aid, talk about the pros of going to their school. And you can do it in an evening without having to go to 30 different schools and make those trips. So it's a pretty cool event. We're actually on the state calendar — there's a statewide organization that runs these so that the recruiters or the admissions people aren't all competing on one night in a different place. So they try and spread them out, which is cool.

We participated in that event and it was like speed dating for your educational options after high school. It was great. We were talking to everybody from Duke to UNR, all the branches of the service, and ultimately the school that my son selected was one of the schools that was represented there. Great option without having to travel.

Yeah. To go to all those places. I like students to be a little more savvy about their questions than my son was when we did that at his age. His primary question was, how close are you to the beach? I mean, I understand the question, but there are some other things to explore.

I demonstrated virtually zero wisdom as a person in my young 20s, late teens, but I did tour the Pepperdine campus and I knew for certain that I would get nothing done if I went there. And so that's both a pitch and a not-pitch for Pepperdine because it's just too pretty looking out over Malibu like that. It's gorgeous.

Yeah, there's a number of schools down there the same way — Point Loma on the beach, Santa Barbara, Galena Beach. First time I was in there, I'm like, I couldn't have been a student here, no doubt.

Where did your son go to school? To go to school by the beach?

He went to Biola. Which was not too far from the beach. Spent a lot of days and nights at the beach, I think.

Yeah, for sure. So does somebody listening need to hear about College and Career Options that we haven't already covered, if anything?

I think we pretty much covered it, Griff. I appreciate your questions — I think it was thorough. Again, I just want to express my gratitude primarily to the McConnell Foundation for allowing all this to happen. This is a unique organization on a national level. The thing that has made College and Career Options different is our ability to offer career exploration services and financial aid services for free. These federal TRIO grants are far and wide, but they are prescriptive in what can be done, and they serve just a narrow cohort of students on a campus. Our services are available for anyone, have been made available for anyone, and we've put financial aid and career exploration into that mix — which doesn't come with the TRIO programs. They don't have experts in those areas. So unique, unique model, unique to have been funded for so long, and just a model organizational structure for the rest of the country. There aren't many like us out there. People have called me over the years — they're moving to wherever they're going — do you know who does what you do in this town? Well, there is nobody that does this in that town. There are some different places, but there certainly aren't many. So I just want to express extreme gratitude, extreme foresight from the McConnell Foundation to be able to see what they saw, and to be able to see how they can move the needle. Nothing but gratitude from me.

Normally I would close the podcast with the guest, but I have to close today because I cannot encourage parents and students enough — start with your sophomores. Get them to the career fair, the college fair, and get them to start thinking about that. And then when they're sophomores and juniors, connect with College and Career Options, not just for career exploration, but just to demystify the whole financial aid process. Don't be afraid. It's really quick. It's not that hard. It's not that painful. So you can make good decisions about your educational opportunities going forward. Great organization — even for someone who wasn't uninitiated like we were as a family. It was a huge resource to the community. You mentioned earlier you're wrapping up your career, but this organization needs to continue, and this community needs robust support for it, because 50,000 kids have benefited from the work of this organization, including my own family. I'm grateful to you and the group not only for your time today, but also just for the work in the community over the last 20-plus years.

Well, thank you for saying all that, Griff. I appreciate it. And yeah, it was my pleasure to be here. Thank you again for the invitation. Always, always great to be with you. This was no exception, so thank you so much.

Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for being here, Brad.