About Andrea

Personal finance is just about the last thing Andrea Cecile thought she would have any interest in; growing up in the Bay Area at the height of the dotcom boom, she totally ignored the world around her and buried herself in existential philosophy. Somehow, she made it to Columbia University in New York City and found herself worrying about her metaphysics paper and her bank account with equal intensity.

Growing up in an immigrant family and being on scholarships did not prepare her for the financial burden of living on her own in NYC- so many things to buy! Seeing that none of her peers, wealthy or not, had the tools to navigate the financial world, despite being incredibility intelligent and talented in other fields, she vowed to learn all that she could about economics, money and finance from the perspective of someone who naturally isn’t inclined to care.

While in college, she worked on a variety of financial literacy programs, primarily for adolescent girls, in both California and New York. She graduated from college in 2004 with an almost useless degree in philosophy and started working at American Express as a Financial Advisor, cold-calling people at dinner and asking them to invest with her. After a few months of slowly realizing this was not for her, she moved on to organizational finance. She is currently the Director of Finance and Operations for a NYC-based non-profit that provides SAT and college guidance to under-resourced high school students. She is planning to apply to business school this year, so any tips would be appreciated.

In addition, she teaches financial literacy classes to adults in a local public housing development and blogs about her cats (doesn’t everyone?), the food she eats, and personal finance at caketime. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with her partner of six years, Grace, and still enjoys shopping with inherited fervor of her mother, though is trying to adopt some of her father’s frugality.

Andrea can be reached at andrea@queercents.com