What Do We Teach
Employing a peer-to-peer teaching style, we provide high school students with a thorough understanding of topics such as investing, budgeting, and credit to help them gain both financial literacy and independence.
Investments
Want to learn about investments? Explore the world of stocks, bonds, cryptocurrency, and real estate with our young financial enthusiasts.
Financial Language
What is credit and debit? What is the difference between assets and liabilities? Learn this and more through our comprehensive 10-week curriculum.
This is key to financial sustenance, and with our course, students are taught the ins and outs of healthy monetary habits.
Asset Management
Our Curriculum
Our comprehensive curriculum covers a broad range of topics with the purpose of giving students a strong fundamental understanding of financial concepts.
Assets & Liabilities
Want to learn about what puts money in your pocket? Learn about the difference between assets and liabilities, debt, and how to balance budget sheets.
Conscious Spending
Business Operation & Careers
Retirement
Many Americans do not have money saved for retirement. We teach students the importance of saving early and how to take advantage of retirement plans.
Introduction
This lesson introduces students to financial vocabulary and literacy.
Investments
Want to learn about investments? Explore the world of stocks, bonds, cryptocurrency, and real estate.
Personal Savings
Want to learn about saving? Explore budgeting techniques, the power of compound interest, the difference between saving and checking accounts, and how to keep your savings safe.
Taxes
Knowledge of taxes are essential in today's financial world. Learn about different types of taxes, tax brackets, and tax-advantaged plans.
Credit
Explore the difference between wants and needs, lines of credit, and ways to enhance self control at the mall.
Want to learn about careers in business and finance? Explore the world of hedge funds, financial consulting, and corporate finance.
Learn about credit cards, loans, debt, and smart borrowing practices.
About Us
In starting this program, our goal was to empower students of all backgrounds by equipping them with valuable financial knowledge. Through our 10-week curriculum, we have helped students of all backgrounds gain a comprehensive baseline understanding of topics ranging from investments and the stock market to taxes and retirement plans. One of the true highlights of Trifecta is the way in which finance is taught: from students to students. This structure ensures the education process is both fun and effective for all parties involved.
Meet The Team
Ian Ishak
As co-founder and president of Trifecta Finance, Ian Ishak seeks to expand his longtime mission of making finance more equitable through peer-taught educational courses. In the beginning of the covid lockdowns, Ian explored his interest in finance, learning about stocks, investments, and budgeting. Through his research and interaction with peers and family members, he realized that many were not informed about basic financial topics. To change this, he and his friend Luke started teaching financial courses to high school students through El Nido Family Centers and co-founded Trifecta Finance. Outside of this endeavor, Ian enjoys biking, tinkering with computers, and swimming. He is currently a senior at Palisades Charter High School.
Dylan Silverman
Dylan Silverman, a junior at Oakwood secondary school, joined Trifecta in April 2021. Through his role in expanding the volunteer roster and outreach, Dylan hopes to bring the program to its most remarkable capacity. Dylan has always sought out ways to impact his community positively. While he took many avenues to improve his community, either through tutoring or judging debates, Trifecta was the perfect outlet to better the people around him on a much grander scale. With hobbies from online commerce to poetry, Dylan hopes to utilize his skills to impact the LA community positively.
Konnie Duan
Konnie Duan is a rising senior at Harvard-Westlake School. She actively seeks to help her community, whether through teaching science at a family center or helping out at the medical booth at fencing tournaments. She is a fencer and dancer (predominantly trained in ballet and contemporary dance). In her free time, she enjoys traveling, skiing, watching Youtube videos, and hanging out with friends. Through Trifecta, she currently works on cultivating communications with partner schools and strives to educate others about financial literacy.
Harper Fogelson
Harper Fogelson attends Harvard Westlake where she is a rising junior. She is the Volunteer Coordinator at Trifecta Finance, strengthening Trifecta’s interpersonal connections with trusted volunteers and scholastic relationships at a variety of schools in underserved communities. Aside from enjoying the mathematical aspects of finance and simply all things related to math, the understanding that knowledge in the realm of finance can help many students gain social mobility is truly her driving force in continuing to pursue financial expertise. Her interest in the financial world was sparked by a three week summer program at Oxford, where she studied Business and Finance and built a startup company. Aside from finance, she loves music, specifically playing the cello, and adores all learning related to math and science.
Sienna Mahmoodzadegan
Sienna Mahmoodzadegan grew up in Los Angeles, California before attending the Taft School in Connecticut, where she is a senior. She has been an active volunteer in numerous organizations which provide service to communities in need, including Baby2Baby and Vision to Learn. While her favorite subjects in school include History and English, she has always been interested in the stock market and personal finance. Her interest in the business world was sparked when she was assigned to write a stock report on the Walt Disney Company. She realized how daunting the world of finance could be without someone mentoring you through all of the complexity. Trifecta is an ideal way for her to incorporate her interest in financial literacy and sharing that knowledge with others. Aside from academics, Sienna enjoys surfing, golfing and playing pickleball.
Christopher Brent
Christopher Brent is a College Freshman at Cox School of Business at SMU. Christopher started his own L.L.C “Brent Capital Group” in 2021 after earning enough capital through his job as an investor. He has worked several jobs at Gideon Strategic Partners, Revenue.io, and as of recent JLL. He is an ambitious and curious 19 year old who avidly loves to learn about the field of finance and world economics. In spring of 2022, Christopher raised and contributed $10,000 to Trifecta from his philanthropic fund and joined the team.
Meet The Board of Advisors
Dr. Richard Milford
Richard is an advisor to early-stage startups, leveraging three decades of successfully leading advanced technology and product development in the Aerospace & Defense industry at both large and small companies.
Most recently was Senior Director of Systems & Software at Virgin Orbit where he played a key role in transforming the company from R&D to production and three successful commercial flights of the air-launched LauncherOne system. Prior to that he held a number of leadership roles at Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems including Flight Controls & Software Department Manager for 150+ engineers, and Platform R&D Portfolio Manager and Chief Systems Engineer for the $1B 702 Satellite Product Line.
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Richard has published papers and patents in control systems, software, and product line strategy, and holds a Ph.D. in Robotics and Controls from the University of Queensland Australia, and an MBA from UCLA Anderson with a finance concentration. He has taught STEM classes, and has a passion for financial planning and a desire to help people benefit from increased financial acumen.
Lorre Jay
Lorre Jay is President and founder of Portfolio Valuation Advisors, a valuation consultancy located in Bozeman, MT. She is also an adjunct professor of finance at the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship at Montana State University. Before that, Lorre was a Managing Director at Duff & Phelps where she advised boards of directors, management teams, and individuals on portfolio valuations for private equity and hedge funds, valuations for tax, financial reporting, and fairness and solvency opinions.
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She has consulted with Fortune 500 companies and large not-for-profit healthcare companies for more than 20 years. She has worked on projects for companies in Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Romania, Austria, England, France, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, India, Bolivia and Japan. She has published articles on goodwill impairment, debt exchanges, and fairness opinions and has presented to students on finance topics at Stanford University, Indiana University and Montana State University. She mentors UCLA female graduate and undergraduate students.
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Lorre also worked in Poland assisting the Polish banks to learn corporate finance skills on a USAID contract working with Bank Handlowy w Warszawie (now Citibank) and Bank Roswoju Eksportu (now mBank). Lorre has an MBA from UCLA and a Bachelor’s in Business/Finance from the University of Wisconsin.
Selwyn Miller
Selwyn Miller is a Certified Financial Planner™ practitioner and a Chartered Financial Consultant® in practice in Westlake Village, California. He is affiliated with the Wealth Management Partners, an association of high-level professional financial planners based in Woodland Hills, CA. Wealth Management Partners focuses largely on helping business people and professionals use their income and assets to help build security and wealth for themselves and their families. Miller's own focus is on helping closely-held business people and professionals use their businesses or careers to achieve their personal goals.
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Miller, a native of South Africa who has also lived in Britain and Canada, came to the United States in 1975 to earn his MBA at UCLA in finance and accounting. After several years of corporate financial planning with Citicorp and First Interstate Bancorp, he decided to focus on planning for business people and professionals.
His key areas of specialization are:
- Estate and Wealth Protection
- Business succession planning
- Retirement Planning
- Portfolio planning
- Special benefits for owners and key executives of closely held businesses and practices
- Long-term care planning
Selwyn’s mission is to assist business and professional people turn career success into personal financial success. He helps people make the transitions necessary to become and remain financially independent.
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Jay Prag
Jay Prag has been teaching at the Drucker School of Management since 1986. He has
also taught at Harvey Mudd College, Pomona College, and Claremont McKenna
College. He is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of LINC Housing, a nonprofit low-
income housing developer in Long Beach. He is the author of Macroeconomic
Essentials and Microeconomic Essentials (both from MIT Press), Financial
Management for Executives (Cambridge Business Press), the forthcoming Covid U:
Business Lessons from a Pandemic (World Scientific Press) and several other book
chapters and journal articles.
Jay has won numerous teaching awards in his years at The Claremont Colleges. He
currently serves as the Coordinator for the PhD program, the academic director of the
Masters in Finance program, and the academic co-director of the Arts Management
program at the Drucker School. He previously served as academic director for the
Executive MBA and the Financial Engineering programs at the Drucker School.
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Luke Shuman
A freshman at Stanford University, Luke Shuman co-founded Trifecta. With the support of Bank of America, Luke developed an assortment of math & finance programs at the El Nido Family Centers, serving over 200 students & winning him the Presidential Service Award, KNX’s Hero of the week, & El Nido’s Impact award. Luke is passionate about using technology to solve meaningful problems in finance & works with Leading Business Ventures (LBV), a boutique, MIT-backed venture consultancy firm to help build financial products for underbanked individuals. In his spare time, Luke enjoys building algorithmic trading systems, surfing, & spending time with his friends.
Community Impact
Throughout our existence as an organization we have worked with numerous supporters and partners, notably El Nido Family Centers, Linc Housing, and Bank of America. In working with these organizations, we have gotten one step closer to fulfilling our goal of delivering effective and engaging financial instruction to all teens.
Schools
Programs/Partners
Supporters
