Roger Ferguson and Stacey Tisdale stopped by The Breakfast Club this week to talk about home ownership, your social security + more! Ferguson who is the President and CEO of TIAA spoke on the show about how he was able to achieve so much success in the financial sector:
“My Father was very focused on financial matters, but he didn’t have any money at all…He was a government worker and not very highly compensated. He grew up in the Depression, and the Depression got him very interested in how banks work. My Mother was very interested in education. I learned from her that education was the one thing that society can’t take away from you regardless of what color you are. All of those things came together and I fell in love with economics, got very interested in the Federal Reserve, and had the good fortune to be appointed in 1997 as the third Black governor and in 1999 as the first Black Vice Chairman.”
As someone who has achieved a position that many have yet to reach Ferguson also shared some insight on what is needed to close to wage gap in America:
“One is closing the income gap. The wealth gap is driven by the fact that we don’t have the income stream. Second is using that income smartly, which is about financial literacy, learning how to manage the money you have be it small or large amounts. And the third thing is to know where the assets are that create wealth. Blacks are under invested in a couple of things that have really drive wealth creation, particularly in the last decade. We are under invested in things like equities versus other groups.”
Learn more at Tiaa.org