The employees you're not counting: A conversation with Maggie Ruvoldt

People often treat student debt as a young person’s problem. In this episode, Jamila Stewart from Summer and Maggie Ruvoldt explain why that’s wrong. Maggie is a senior partner and COO at ChangeBridge, and she has seen the issue from several sides. At 2U, she helped people pay for degrees. As head of HR at LEARN Behavioral, she supported a national workforce of clinicians and behavior technicians. When LEARN rolled out Summer, she expected master’s-level clinicians to use it most. She was surprised by how many technicians signed up. Many of them had some college and the debt that came with it, but no degree and none of the higher earnings a degree brings. Older employees came forward too. Many were quietly paying off their own loans while also trying to help their kids pay for school.

Maggie argues that student debt isn’t just an employee’s personal finances. It shows up at work as distraction, lower 401(k) participation and turnover. One clinician told Maggie that cutting her payments by $400 a month felt like a raise, and that she was taking her first vacation since finishing her degree. Maggie also shares how she made the business case to LEARN’s leadership. Her advice for employers is to dig beneath what employees say they need, and to accept that student debt needs a specialist solution.