Spotlight on EBALDC’s SPO Senior Financial Coach Vanessa Herrera

EBALDC’s SparkPoint Oakland (SPO) builds financial health and increases access to good jobs for all Oakland residents. SPO is the first of twenty-two SparkPoint centers established throughout the Bay Area. These collaborative centers provide financial, workforce, and community-based services to support communities’ economic prosperity. At SparkPoint Oakland, we use one-on-one financial coaching coupled with vetted, non-predatory financial products as a strategy to help clients set their own personal benchmarks for success and work with them to manage credit, reduce debt, increase income, and build assets.

In 2017, Vanessa Herrera began coaching at SPO. She is now a senior financial coach, having served hundreds of Oakland/East Bay residents.

Q: What inspired you to become a financial coach?

A: Growing up in Oakland I saw financial disparities amongst people of color. As I grew up and completed my undergraduate studies, I became more passionate about helping those in my community. I became interested in financial coaching when I started learning about the importance of credit and taxes. I [reflected on] what I needed to know about the role and then started doing financial coaching over at SparkPoint at our former Eastmont Center location in East Oakland. I started taking on clients and saw all sorts of financial challenges they became involved with, which made me more eager to learn how to be a more effective coach. Soon after, I started turning my clients into success stories by helping them raise their credit scores, reduce their debt, remove tax liens, among other complex financial situations.

Q: Can you share an example of how you have helped a client?

A: One of the populations I work with is Laney College students who are reentering society after incarceration; these are students at Laney’s Restoring Our Communities (ROC) program, an academic program by and for formerly incarcerated students to help support and equip these students with the tools to be successful in school and beyond. Recently, a ROC client who had been incarcerated for many years came out of institutional custody. This individual learned that while they were incarcerated, someone had stolen their identity and made a fraudulent entry now appearing on their credit report. This individual needed help with cleaning up the credit report and then with creating credit.

Q: What is the most rewarding part of your work as a coach for SPO and the students you work with at Laney?

A: The most rewarding part of being a coach is receiving phone calls from clients who have achieved their goals after taking the knowledge I taught them about building their financial health. Some of my clients have gone into homeownership, bought cars, improved their credit scores by at least 100 points and gotten rid of collection debt. Also, while working with ROC students I have learned more about the challenges they face. This has helped me be a better coach and has helped me become a better advocate for them.

Being able to show clients they can achieve their goals even if life may seem impossible is definitely a motivator not only for the client, but for myself as their coach. What I like about SparkPoint and our coaching model is that we have a lot of flexibility in how we handle our sessions, which truly helps us meet clients where they are and helps them get to where they want to be.

We thank Vanessa for her leadership and steadfast commitment to helping improve the financial health of Oakland and East Bay residents! Together with United Way Bay Area, West Oakland Job Resource Center, Laney College, and Restoring Our Communities, EBALDC is a partner in and Lead Agency of SparkPoint Oakland (SPO)– a collaborative program that helps community members build financial health through confidential one-on-financial sessions with a financial coach to set goals and create a plan to get out of debt, improve credit, increase income, and build assets. EBALDC’s investment in SPO aligns with our vision of Healthy Neighborhoods where all community members can thrive. Learn more about SparkPoint Oakland here.