Community Champion: Lindsey Zerbinos
Lindsey Zerbinos approaches financial education as something deeper than calculations and budgets – it’s a way of thinking that informs how she lives and leads. With motivations shaped by her own and others’ past experiences, Lindsey is passionate about guiding others away from the mistakes that limit so many people’s opportunities. Her perseverance and advocacy have made her a recognized leader and ally within Colorado communities.
As both an educator and community advocate, Lindsey’s objectives closely mirror the core mission of the National Financial Educators Council. She plays an active role in promoting financial well-being through diverse platforms and initiatives. Across Colorado, her programs reflect the energy, teamwork, innovation, and steadfast resolve she brings to every project.
Personal Statement
When I began teaching middle school financial literacy, I expected to explore concepts appropriate for their age. Instead, I discovered a deeper structural gap: many seventh-grade students cannot memorize basic financial vocabulary, identify coins, or round to the nearest cent. The parents – often driving cars nicer than my own – are asking their children for financial advice. Teachers with high degrees quietly admit their failures to me. For example, someone told me he paid credit cards using other credit cards because no one ever explained compound interest. This is just one of the many painful stories I have heard from highly educated people.
This is not a failure of intelligence. It is a failure of education.
I understand their frustration because I lived it. I graduated with a perfect GPA, AP classes, and a degree in Financial Economics – and at 23 years old, I still did not know how to buy insurance. I could explain market structure, but I could not calculate my own APR. I was trained to be a high-performing student, not a prepared adult. If someone with every supposed advantage of schooling can graduate unprepared for the financial systems of adult life, then millions of students are being promised something education does not deliver.
I teach in Denver – a city that reveals the contradiction. In one neighborhood, every car is worth more than a working family earns in a year. Two hours away, an $11 million home in Aspen is stocked by an Amazon worker deciding between attending their child’s baseball game or earning enough to feed the child that night. The children in my classroom and the children in Aspen pledge allegiance to the same nation, yet they are not offered the same knowledge that shapes opportunity.
Not because they lack ambition or intelligence – but because practical financial wisdom threatens systems built on the ignorance of the many.
In my classroom, I designed what I believe is the first and only year-long required middle school financial literacy program in the country. It is built on understanding real systems, not just definitions and equations; logic, not memorization. Students analyze the “impossible odds” of the McDonald’s Monopoly game, calculate Denver rents based on Colorado wages, examine the regressive structure of the lottery, debate ethical AI practices, and design products in a Shark Tank-style entrepreneurship project using AI as a tool – not a shortcut.
The purpose is not to shame individual choices, but to reveal the systems influencing them. When students understand incentives, structures, and math as it exists in their lives, they begin to see their future differently. Many of them have never truly been asked, “What do you want to be?” – and for the first time, they have a space to imagine it.
Community Champion: Lindsey Zerbinos
With a career grounded in financial education and a heart firmly set on service, Lindsey Zerbinos exemplifies what it means to champion financial wellness. Her dedication goes beyond her profession, reflecting a genuine desire to give back and create lasting, positive change in the lives of others.
By building bridges across communities and encouraging collective action, Lindsey advances the goal of healthier financial futures for all. Her efforts have not gone unnoticed, and the Colorado Financial Educators Council is grateful for the passion and leadership she brings to this important work.
