WorkPlace Stories

Jacqueline Cooper is a true force in Boston-area real estate, though mostly behind the scenes and out of the headlines. She is the Executive Director of Financial Education Associates (www.money-classes.com). She and her team provide a steady and rich menu of workshops and courses to home borrowers get to know the basics, the perils as well as the possibilities, and the way the system works. First time buyers and distressed owners at risk of default are prime targets for her help. She also leads “Credit Boot Camps” and personal financial management seminars in the community and at her church, Abundant Life, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She earned degrees from Northeastern University and MIT and along the way created a successful dress and accessory design business.

…………………………………………………………….

David W. Gill: Could you tell us a little about your work and business?

Jacqueline Cooper: The business that I’m working on right now is providing homebuyer and financial education. I also do consulting work for organizations around those two topics: home ownership and financial education. My business is about thirteen years old now. I have five instructors that work with me and about forty hours total of part-time administrative assistance.

Gill: Where is your business based?

Cooper: My clients are everywhere but I’m physically based in Dorcester (Massachusetts). Since most of our work involves holding classes and seminars in different places we don’t maintain an outside office space. It’s a remote type of business and I just have an office in my home. Our staff meetings are around my dining room table!

Gill: Who are your clients and where do they learn about you?

Cooper: We have contracts with the city of Boston to provide homebuyer and financial education classes to Boston residents who are interested in buying homes in Boston. The city has a program that provides financial assistance to people who are buying homes in the city through a federal grant. Our program supports those buyers because they’re required to have homebuyer education. We do about forty eight-hour homebuyer classes a year. I also have what I call “Credit Boot Camp” which is six hours.

Gill: And you designed all of these courses?

Cooper: The homebuyer class uses a standard state-wide curriculum but I created the “Credit Boot Camp” course to teach people how to look at their credit and get it in shape for home ownership or any other purposes they like. In addition, I created several other seminars which support people’s efforts towards home ownership. It helps them get their paperwork together. It helps them to understand debt ratios and other mysteries of home ownership. Many of these are little one-and-a-half to two hour sessions to help people dig down into their situation.

Gill: During the big housing crisis of 2007-2008, many people were defaulting on their mortgage loans and losing their homes because they were given loans that they couldn’t ultimately manage and were unable to refinance. Did that experience impact your business negatively?

Cooper: Actually no—we had some growth. Watching trends and being a sole proprietor allows you to move and adapt quickly. The city had a foreclosure prevention program and we created classes to help people through this crisis. We had a little seminar on determining if your mortgage was going to get you in trouble. We gave people some guidance on how to know that you are in trouble and what you do if you are. There are certain steps that a homeowner could take to prevent foreclosure. I had a class around that.

Of course, a lot of these people were not going to be able to prevent foreclosure. So I created a class called “How to Purchase Foreclosed Property”—because eventually people would want to do this. Some of my fellow homebuyer educators were steamed at me but I said “this is what is real.” Initially, when the crisis first started, 38% of the people were able to save their homes. They could show enough income to make the case that, though they had a problem now, it would not be on-going in the future. But that left 62% of the people who were going to lose their homes; sad as it was, there would be a lot of vacant homes around the neighborhoods that were right for buyers.

So I developed a seminar on how to purchase foreclosed property. This gave people an idea of what the process was and what to look out for. The homes may not be in great condition, especially if they were vacant for any length of time. My class gave them checklists and guidelines. Shortly after I developed the class, the federal government started a program for foreclosed properties but required some education. The city of Boston received a grant because we had started the education program! The city used that class with the neighborhood stabilization funds they got from the federal government and saved a lot of neighborhoods that had high foreclosure rates. So that’s the kind of work that I do. It’s kind of like watching out for what’s going on and jumping in when it’s time.

Gill: You could have done a lot of different things with your financial and real estate knowledge. But what you’re doing is providing a real service to people to help them get into and retain their homes. Did your Christian values play a conscious role in choosing to spend your career helping people this way?

Cooper: It was something that I always loved doing, even before I made a career of it. I helped my friends buy their homes. As part of my values, I think it is important for people to build some assets and have something for themselves rather than always renting and being the victim of other peoples’ policies. People often take advantage of their client’s ignorance—I want to make sure that people get the best deal that they can. I just think it’s the basic Golden Rule, “do unto others as you would have others do unto you”

Growing up here in metro Boston, I lived in a part of town that was redlined. Sellers and banks discriminated against minorities and kept them out of certain neighborhoods. People bought and sold their houses out of fear, at unfair prices and in poor conditions that they weren’t able to fix. The issue for me is what’s fair and what’s right? We lived in a city where only one in three people were homeowners. A lot of people that I grew up around were happy just being renters but I saw a lot of displacement in the neighborhood where I lived. The way to stay in your neighborhood and keep your housing affordable is to buy it. Then nobody can tell you to move.

Gill: So you really believe in home ownership rather than renting.

Cooper: I believe in it. If you’re not going anywhere, I believe in it. It’s different if you are going to move in three years or you know that this isn’t your final place that you want to live – fine. But if you can afford to do it, I don’t think you should leave yourself victim to what other people are thinking.

Gill: When people own something, they invest themselves in it and usually take better care of it. If you’re just renting, some landlord may not appreciate your efforts to improve the place—and even rip you off. My wife and I bought a big old broken down house in Oakland back in 1972 and have spent years, decades, upgrading it, investing our hard labor as well as some money when we could find it. We know and love every corner of that house because we worked on all of it. There’s something psychological and spiritual, not just financial, about home ownership.

Cooper: Right, I think it is spiritual! When my brother Larry was looking for a house, he insisted that I visit it and give it the okay. I can go into a house and say “this is good” or “no, you don’t want to live here.” Before Larry bought his house he said “you’ve got to come over.” I went to the house and walked through it and said “it’s a good house but it’s a little sad.” Later when Larry talked to the realtor and it turned out that the seller was getting a divorce and the guy was really sad about leaving the house. They say it’s weird that you can “feel” houses but there is something to that. It’s not just financial numbers on a page.

Gill: The way a place is painted and decorated, and the way the rooms are configured, creates and expresses a set of values that affect the lives of the residents. You can have lots of smaller spaces inviting people to separate and be alone—or one larger central living room that warmly invites people to spend their time together. When my kids were growing up we were all aware of what was playing on the television if it was on in the living room. And our fireplace was pretty inviting on a cold night.

Cooper: My adult children both made a conscious decision not to wire cable television into the bedrooms of their houses so that if something was important enough to watch, they had to come out of their rooms. Of course today we often all sit around with our laptops while we’re together!

Gill: Tell me more about your background and what led up to your current career in real estate and finance education.

Cooper: This is actually my third career. They don’t sound like they link together but they’re all part of me. I’m probably one of the few people who has done pretty much everything I ever really wanted to do, so I have no complaints. I first started working as a techie at the same time I was an undergrad. I worked for the John Hancock insurance company, first in inventions and then in property and casualty insurance. I was always been in some kind of money-related job.
Gill: Did your high school and college studies draw you in this direction?

Cooper: I went to an all-girls Latin high school, then to the University of Rochester for a year thinking I would study chemical engineering. Then I moved to Northeastern University and majored in Management Information Systems—a program that was half business and half information technology. I was always mathematically inclined but I was not thinking about being an accountant. Back in high school I didn’t know anybody who had that kind of a job. It was only after my first year of college when I worked for the insurance company that I realized that these careers even existed. I was really interested in the retirement pensions side of the business because we studied how long people would live and how much money they would collect (or need). I found that really interesting—the financial side of retirement and how it impacted people.

When you’re looking at somebody who’s getting $237 a month, you wonder how they’re living. They may also receive social security but not everyone would have enough. How could we help them plan better throughout their life? So that early insurance company job had a fascinating project and it also called on my technical and mathematical skills, which I loved. I really liked sitting some place working by myself. I know people often say they love working on teams, but for me. I really like working by myself. Working with a team is okay but then I like doing my assignment on my own.

Gill: So your first career was in the insurance business?

Cooper: Yes, but in the financial services, computer systems analysis and design side of the business. I’m so far in the back end that no one really knows that people like me exist but when they get a bill, they know they get a policy. I’m the person that turns the data into reality for their protection. After I worked at John Hancock, I worked at Stoning Engineering for a while. This was a cool job working on accounting systems and supply systems for nuclear power plants. Then I went back to Hancock and worked on property and casualty, homeowners and car insurance—still on the technology side.
And then it just became too much. At that time my kids were twelve and six years old and it was just too much to be their parent while working long hours away from the family. So that was when my second career got started: a sewing business—dressy dresses, weddings. Then I started making accessories because there are only so many dressy dresses one can do. My accessories business grew to include twenty-six boutique stores as well as craft shows and things like that. That was working out okay and I did it as my main thing for three years.

Gill: Second career in making dresses and accessories; what happened next?

Cooper: I needed to make some extra money and that’s when my best friend recommended me to somebody to teach the homebuyer classes I mentioned before. In 1992 I left John Hancock and started the sewing business. I kept sewing but in 1996 I also started doing the teaching part-time for another person.

In 1998 I went bowling with my daughter and I fell and really messed up my shoulder. This made sewing really impossible. That really got me thinking: What am I going to do if I can’t do this physical activity of sewing anymore? I was talking to a colleague from the homebuyer class world and she said “Do you have a bachelor’s degree?” And I said “yes” and she said “ask the association if they would help fund you to go to MIT’s Urban Studies master’s degree program.” So I applied and got in.

I was a full time grad student for two years. It was a little scary because I had been out of school for a while. My son was now almost as old as my fellow students! But it was a good experience. Then a contract came up for the city of Boston. I formed a business and pulled it all together and applied and they accepted my proposal. The first contract was only for a year to see if it would work out. The next contract was for three years.

Gill: Much of your work is government contract based and community-based. Have you done anything in your church—either adults or youth—on financial literacy, budgeting, saving, and those kinds of subjects where you are an expert educator?

Cooper: Yes, periodically. Maybe once a year I’ll get a whole Sunday, including a presentation from me instead of the sermon. If you schedule something on a Saturday, the people may not have the time but if they’re already in church they can hear. Beyond that, sometimes people need individual assistance and I provide that for people at the church, helping them to figure things out. At my church, if you need it, I’ll help you out. So I get everything from young people and their first jobs trying to figure out how to save and manage their money to more established people that might be in trouble because of a life incident or people that never just had it together and they’re trying to get it together.

Gill: Have you also helped churches with real estate decisions? Should they buy, build, refinance, or whatever?

Cooper: No, I haven’t done that for other churches. I’ve done it for members of our church. We have a three-unit rental property that I manage for the church. But my main help is for individuals in our church.

Gill: You are an unusual case in that your father was your pastor growing up, and now your brother is your pastor. I often ask business people if they feel really supported by their pastors in the sense that they recognize that what you do is important out there in the world and not just what you do in church.

Cooper: Yes, my situation is a bit different because the church leadership is my family so I do get supported and encouraged in my daily work, not just my service to the congregation. I guess as the pastor’s kid, and now sister, I see clearly how important it is for church members to bring what they know to church. People in our church have expertise in different fields and I feel that they are also supported. We all don’t just do one thing.

Gill: I’m really interested in how our faith relates to our work. In your case, it seems like there was never a sudden moment of awakening—like a light went off at some point and you realized the importance of faith at work. It’s more like you grew up with a good work ethic and a strong set of biblical values and it’s been a pretty seamless transition between following God in church and continuing to follow him Monday to Saturday at work and in the community.

Cooper: Right! I like to hear that people did well and that they found something that’s working for them and their family . . . they can afford to pay their mortgage . . . that they can participate actively in their community . . . and that is just a better life for them and their families. It’s not that it’s all without challenge. Someone in one of my financial classes said to me recently, “yes, I’m a mess again but I know how to get myself out so I don’t have that same level of panic I had the first time.”