Jay-Z partners with Philly-based program to bring financial literacy to HBCUs

A financial literacy program created out of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania will partner with Jay-Z’s Shawn Carter Foundation to bring a wealth-building curriculum to historically Black colleges and universities, including nearby Lincoln University.

Wharton professor emeritus Keith Weigelt created Bridges to Wealth to address the nation’s intractable racial wealth gap on a local level. In the program, he teaches financial literacy and wealth management to Philadelphia’s mostly Black residents at no cost to participants.

“It’s not that people don’t want to generate wealth in low-wealth neighborhoods. They do,” Weigelt said. “They just don’t know how.”

The partnership will pilot a program at Lincoln, Norfolk State University, and Virginia State University, with classes kicking off in the spring. There, cohorts of students will learn the program’s financial literacy curriculum and be tasked with going out into their communities to teach what they’ve learned.

Called Champions for Financial Literacy, the accredited curriculum is based on a community service-based class the professor taught at Penn, where he launched the courses.

When Weigelt began teaching at Wharton in the late 1980s, he would walk through West Philadelphia to class. Those walks sparked a passion to help close the Black-white wealth gap.

“One day I was thinking, can’t we do more for the neighborhood?” Weigelt said. Eventually, Bridges to Wealth was born.

Though Philadelphia’s poverty rate declined between 2022 and 2023, the city is still the poorest big city in the nation. The share of Black residents in poverty is almost twice as high as the share of white Philadelphians.

According to a 2024 report from the Brookings Institution, Black wealth lagged far behind other racial groups and the racial wealth gap has continued to grow. Median Black wealth was just under $45,000, compared to $62,000 for Latino families, $285,000 for white families, and $536,000 for Asian families.

Weigelt said several factors, including a well-earned distrust of financial institutions, have contributed to the wealth gap. Many community members he works with are apprehensive.

“They’re really scared, they overestimate market risk,” Weigelt said. “They don’t know what market risk is but they always know someone who lost all their money.”

His program through Wharton is neutral. It doesn’t accept any sponsorship and comes at no cost to participants, making trust-building easier.

“That’s always been my goal, to break down every barrier that I could,” Weigelt said.

Tramel Parker was working at Penn when she learned of the Wharton-based community financial literacy program. Parker had worked around financial markets since she was a teenager. At 18, thanks to superb math skills and a zhuzhed-up resume, Parker landed a job as a key puncher on the trading floor of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, just a 20-minute walk from her Francisville home.

She worked at Goldman Sachs and eventually earned her degree in business from Temple University.

But despite her extensive financial background, it wasn’t until Parker, 46, started attending Weigelt’s classes about 10 years ago that she became empowered to build her own wealth.

“When I went, it was amazing. He was teaching predominantly Black people — other races were there, too — basically the ABCs of being financially literate,” Parker said before rattling off terms you might hear in the office of a wealth manager — expense ratio, portfolio performance, ETFs, and indexes.

“He was giving us,” she said, “information that financial advisers will charge you for.”

Kevin Brown, who manages the West Philadelphia Neighborhood Advisory Committee for HopePHL, helped bring Weigelt’s programs to the group’s monthly committee meetings after committee members found the program and wanted to improve their financial literacy.

“Keith came and he shared with us how vast the wealth gap was between Blacks and whites,” Brown said. “[I was] like, oh, my God. It was so bad.”

Weigelt encouraged community members to bring their families and to start investing in funds for themselves and their children, and said they could begin with as little as $1. Brown invested $20. He’s not rich yet, but Brown said Bridges to Wealth helped him invest beyond his 401(k) retirement account.

“It really put me in the game,” Brown said. “And it did so with real knowledge. I’m like, OK. I can do this. I’m not scared.”