"If the adults in the room don't know how money works, what chance do their kids have?"

Early in his career, Lawrence Cain, Jr. worked in environments where he watched adults — people decades into their working lives — navigate financial decisions they had never been taught to understand. Retirement accounts they couldn't explain. Benefits they weren't using. Debt they didn't know how to get out of.

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The question that stayed with him wasn't just about those adults. It was about their children. If someone who has lived and worked for 30 or 40 years still doesn't have access to real financial education, what is their family learning at home? What are their kids being taught — or not taught — about money?

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That question became Abundance University. Not a side project. Not a seminar series. A deliberate, structured institution built to deliver the kind of financial education that communities, schools, and families have never had access to — taught in a way that actually connects.

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Over 16 years, that mission has expanded from community workshops to partnerships with schools, TRiO and Upward Bound programs, and churches across Cincinnati and beyond. More than 2,000 people have come through Abundance University programs. Fifteen-plus schools have brought Lawrence in to work directly with students and families. Four books. Fifteen-plus media appearances, including a feature in The New York Times. 

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The throughline across all of it is the same belief that started this: financial success doesn't happen by accident. It happens on purpose. And it starts with education that meets people where they are.