Board of Advisors



Sam Beard

 Mr. Beard has had the privilege of creating, marketing and then chairing programs for each of the last seven Presidents of the United States – Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush.In 1969, Mr. Beard founded and remains Chairman of the National Development Council (NDC), a national non-profit organization dedicated to redeveloping urban and rural low-income communities. In 1972, along with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and U.S. Senator Robert Taft, Jr., Mr. Beard co-founded the Jefferson Awards for Public Service to create a Nobel Prize for public service. For Mr. Beard’s full bio: http://sambeard.com/resume
Steven D. Biedermann

Steven serves as the Investment Portfolio Manager in the Bureau of Treasury at Chicago Public Schools where he manages a multi-billion dollar fixed income portfolio. Biedermann’s commitment to community service work has made a difference both locally and overseas. He currently serves as the President of the Chicago Peace Corps Association.  Steven served two years as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in the Republic of Kiribati as a mathematics instructor at Teabike College. More recently, he spent several months volunteering with the United Nations in southern Sudan on The Global Fund project.

Grace Tsiang

Dr. Tsiang is the former Director of Undergraduate Economics at the University of Chicago. She has volunteered much of her spare time to increasing financial literacy. Her economics research focuses on human capital utilization and distribution in Malaysia and Taiwan.
Douglas Geib II

Mr. Geib is a financial literacy guru. He is the author of Getting to 30, Financial Advice for My Three Sons. Mr. Geib was a Partner with Ernst & Young and a Board Member and CFO of FirstCom, Bloomberg’s #1 fastest growing U.S. publicly traded technology company in 1999.
Timothy Knowles

Mr. Knowles is the Director of the University of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute, an organization dedicated to improving inner-city education.
Previously, Knowles served as deputy superintendent for Teaching and Learning at Boston Public Schools.  While in Boston he created two organizations devoted to building the pipeline of high quality teachers and school leaders for Boston Public Schools and served as co-director of the Boston Annenberg Challenge, a nationally recognized effort to improve literacy instruction. He also served as the founding director of Teach for America in New York City. For Mr. Knowles’ full bio: http://uei.uchicago.edu/about/staff/bios/knowles.shtml
Jon Pasky

Jon is a founder of both PaskyIP and midVenturesLAUNCH, and is a leader in encouraging entrepreneurialism in the Chicago area. He’s Moneythink’s chief legal advisor, providing invaluable advice as the organization grows.