Junior Steven Blaser develops nonprofits to encourage financial savvy

Junior Steven Blaser has started two major initiatives since coming to Duke: North Carolina Common Sense and Duke/Durham Saves.
Junior Steven Blaser has started two major initiatives since coming to Duke: North Carolina Common Sense and Duke/Durham Saves.

Calling Steven Blaser driven would be an understatement.

The junior public policy and economics major from Bedford, N.Y. has started two major initiatives at Duke in the past few years, showing no sign of slowing down. North Carolina Common Sense, which he started during the first semester of his sophomore year, is a nonprofit with the aim of providing data visualizations and increasing government transparency. Duke/Durham Saves, the latest project spearheaded by Blaser, is an initiative with the goal of promoting savings and financial awareness at Duke and in Durham.

“I was in a lot of different groups my freshman year, all fantastic groups,” Blaser said. “I just like starting things better.”

He said he was drawn to starting North Carolina Common Sense after hearing about a similar initiative—California Common Sense—and feeling like it was a perfect combination of his interests in public policy, economics and statistics. He enlisted the help of other students and asked Ken Rogerson, director of undergraduate studies at the Sanford School of Public Policy, to serve as the nonprofit’s advisor in the short term. Rogerson currently serves on the board of directors for North Carolina Common Sense.

After a surgery during the Spring of his sophomore year, Blaser was confined to a bed in the Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club. During this time, he said, he did a lot of schoolwork and a lot of work to start North Carolina Common Sense.

“I had nothing else to do since I couldn’t get out of bed, so I got all of the initial legwork done,” Blaser said.

Meanwhile, another idea was brewing in Blaser’s head. After working for Summit Service, an accounting firm in Armonk, N.Y., he learned about the national organization America Saves, which promotes saving and financial literacy. He was interested in taking the idea and building it locally in Durham.

After he had the initial idea for Duke/Durham Saves, Blaser reached out to John Caccavale, executive director of the Duke Financial Economics Center.

“I said, ‘Look, this would be a really cool idea and I think we could pursue it,’” Blaser said. “And [Caccavale] said, ‘Great, when do we start?’”

Blaser has been preparing for the February launch of Duke/Durham Saves since last summer, working on it through his Fall semester studying abroad in Madrid.

The organization, which is already partnered with two Durham credit unions—Self-Help Credit Union and Duke Federal Credit Union—aims to lower the barriers to entry for people getting savings accounts. Blaser said he and other students involved in Duke/Durham Saves are hoping to recruit more students, as well as reach out to members of the Durham community to sign up. He is also hoping to co-teach a house course in the Fall on personal finance, as part of an umbrella strategy of improving financial literacy at Duke.

As a college student, one of Blaser’s biggest hurdles initially was proving his credibility. Early on, he said it was difficult to get people to answer the phone or take him seriously, but he said it was easier once he got the ball rolling and had faculty like Caccavale and Rogerson supporting him.

“It’s nothing personal—it’s the nature of the situation,” Blaser said. “As long as you can take enough ego blows, you’ll get something accomplished.”

Blaser said he works three days ahead and has developed a variety of time management techniques to balance the two organizations, his academics, a social life and the other projects he has toyed with launching.

These projects include some ideas for mobile applications and other online ideas, he said. But the majority of his energy right now is dedicated to North Carolina Common Sense and Duke/Durham Saves.

“These are my big babies,” he said smiling.

Caccavale said Blaser’s drive is impressive, and that Blaser is fearless when presenting projects in front of very senior people at Duke and in Durham.

“Most students get about 25 percent of the way on their project and then it falls apart,” Caccavale said. “He’s so focused—he was sending emails, working and talking to people while abroad with the goal of getting it launched in February. There are few students who would be able to get that done.”

Rogerson said Blaser thinks that everything is possible and acts as if it is, but emphasized that he does all of his work with a strong sense of humility.

Now that Blaser is dedicating a larger proportion of his time to Duke/Durham Saves, sophomore Michael Schreiner has taken a larger role in North Carolina Common Sense. Schreiner, a sports associate for The Chronicle and one of Blaser’s fraternity brothers in Pi Kappa Phi, is the director of daily operations for North Carolina Common Sense.

Schreiner stressed how hard of a worker Blaser is, estimating that Blaser puts as much work and time into two or three projects that the average student can only dedicate to one.

“He doesn’t sleep as much as he should,” Schreiner said with a laugh.

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