Financial Caregivers: Developing Financial Knowledge, Building Confidence and Taking Action

Jean Van Ryzin is Senior Director of Communications at NCOA, where she oversees all external messaging for the organization. Jean manages a team of marketing and communications specialists tasked with building the NCOA brand across multiple channels, including web, social, email, and public relations. Prior to working at NCOA, Jean had a freelance writing and editing business and worked for a variety of organizations in the aging field, including LeadingAge.

Dr. Laurel Beedon has spent her career working on retirement income policy as a researcher, writer, speaker, and educator. Dr. Beedon recently retired from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) where she was a Senior Analyst in the Education, Workforce, and Income Security Division. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at WISER. Among her GAO publications are studies on the provision of home and community-based services and how the Social Security Administration delivers information to its constituents. Her prior experience includes Senior Fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) where she led the Washington Internship program, and Senior Policy Adviser at the Public Policy Institute (PPI). At PPI she conducted research and published numerous reports and briefs on Social Security (Old Age and Survivors and Disability Insurance) and other retirement income sources with a focus on the aging and women’s communities. She came to PPI from the Social Security Administration’s Offices of Research and Statistics and Governmental Affairs. In addition to policy research, Dr. Beedon’s experience includes staff member of the American Indian Policy Committee for Senator James Abourezk and faculty member at the George Washington University.  She received her doctorate from Virginia Tech University.

Judith Kozlowski is a Senior Fellow at the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement. She is also a subject matter expert with the DOJ Elder Justice Initiative. Previously, Ms. Kozlowski was Senior Advisor to the HHS Assistant Secretary for Aging and the Administration on Community Living where she worked on national policy initiatives concerning elder abuse and financial exploitation. She also had a long career as a state and federal prosecutor in New York, Miami and Washington, D.C. where she focused on the investigation and trial of complex fraud and white-collar cases. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, she created and ran a multidisciplinary elder financial exploitation federal prosecution team for over a decade.  She was also a trial counsel and branch chief at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Director of the Criminal Prosecution Assistance Group at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Ms. Kozlowski also helped establish the Office for the Financial Protection of Older Americans at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).  She regularly speaks at conferences on Elder Justice and elder financial exploitation.  As a WISER Senior Fellow, she speaks on the topic of caregiving and other issues impacting women’s financial security.