Meet the Team

Pamela Capalad

Co-Founder & CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER®

Pamela Capalad is a Certified Financial Planner™ and Accredited Financial Counselor™ and has been in financial services since 2008. She founded Brunch & Budget to help people have a safe place to make real financial progress and get shameless about money!

While doing deep research into the racial wealth divide and how it directly affected her clients of color and cohosting the Brunch & Budget podcast with her husband Dyalekt, they created the See Change program. See Change is a financial coaching and advocacy program specifically designed for People of Color to heal their relationship with money, navigate a predatory financial system, and build 2nd generation wealth.

Pam, Dyalekt, and their friend Andrea Ferrero also co-founded Pockets Change, a Hip-Hop and finance organization for youth with a mission to change the way we talk about finance.

Pam has been featured in the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, Vice Magazine, and was named New York Magazine’s Best of New York 2019. She was named one of Investments News 40 Under 40 in 2016, Financial Advisor Magazine's Young Advisors to Watch in 2019, and received AFCPE's Financial Planning Center of the Year award in 2022. Pam is a Global Good Fund Fellow, class of 2022.

You can catch her on the internet waves with the Brunch & Budget Podcast.

Andrea Ferrero

Co-Founder & Executive Director

Andrea Ferrero became an educator over a decade ago to be part of changing the world. Teaching on the Navajo and Hopi reservation where she grew up, Andrea saw how even the brightest students faltered when money moved from math class to practical application. Looking for tools to address issues of educational equity, Andrea stepped into the world of financial literacy and ed-tech.

She brings over a decade of experience in teaching and learning, curriculum and program development, and community capacity building together to design award winning educational programs and digital products. Andrea holds a teaching credential in PreK-12th grade multiple subjects and two Master’s in Educational Leadership and Curriculum & Instruction with Multicultural Contexts.

Leading Pockets Change, Andrea works with schools, organizations, and businesses to make finance fun through innovative educational approaches and meaningful ed-tech tools. She has served as a delegate to the World Innovation Summit in Qatar, the ASCD Supervision and Curriculum Development Delegation in China, the Multi-Age Learning Institute in New Zealand, and the Mozilla Open Leaders in England. Andrea is also a board member of the California Jump$tart Coalition.

She is always happy to share coffee and a conversation about changing the world through the development of financial capability.

Dyalekt

Co-Founder & DIRECtor of pedagogy

Brian ‘Dyalekt’ Kushner moved from St. Croix to New York to study acting and law. He also liked to rap. After witnessing civil rights injustices at the law firm he worked for, he dropped both the job and the law classes, pursuing the arts instead. Performances at the Nuyorican led him to Hip Hop Theater, writing plays that have been performed on stages across the world. He didn’t sleep on the rapping either, releasing music and touring internationally. His first album/one man play Square Peg Syndrome helped him get named to the Public Theater’s Emerging Writer’s Group. He has been a mainstay in NYC’s theater and Hip Hop scenes, rocking everywhere from the Bowery Ballroom to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

When Dyalekt was invited to present at a workshop for New York SCORES, a soccer and poetry program in Harlem and the Bronx, his perspective on performance changed. Students are much better audience members than bar patrons, and Dyalekt found he had a natural affinity for facilitation. Hip Hopping with students like he did with MCs in a cypher led to better engagement, grades, and overall attitude toward school than the usual class.

After researching Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Dyalekt designed curricula lining up the elements of Hip Hop with each learning style. Through Hip Hop, or rather, by Hip Hopping, students could assess their learning tendencies and use them to their benefit. Furthermore, the community aspects of Hip Hop show students how to be responsible citizens, peer mentors, and advocates for justice. Dyalekt brought this curriculum, along with his album/play back home to St. Croix, rocking with 17 orgs and over 400 students. They produced 2 books of poetry, an album, and a documentary. He also now teaches teachers how to MC in a classroom.

Dyalekt had been an entrepreneur since his teenage days, and tells his students that the only thing that gets him out of his house before 10am is talking to kids, because he would never make it working on a punch-clock schedule. Since the essence of Hip Hop is making something from nothing, Dyalekt has rapped, written, and performed every freelance gig available to his skill set. He ran rap based Lincoln-Douglas debate/battles to teach youths how to prepare and present at a job interview. He linked up with Pockets Change and co-hosts the Brunch & Budget podcast to help people find freedom in expression, understanding, and their finances.

Dyalekt.com | @dyalektraps

Anna Phutisatayakul

operations Manager

Anna is a lifelong learner who is always thinking of ways to improve processes and systems in her personal and professional life. After earning her B.S. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Behavior from UCSD, Anna went abroad to Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand to learn more about social and emotional development in children and adolescents, particularly how it relates to learning and cognition. When she returned to California, Anna worked as a product and operations manager for an ed-tech company and reignited her passion for education. She wanted to empower the transformational potential of her communities in more ways and transitioned into a project management role that facilitated the oversight of 28 charter schools.

After working in various conventional schools ranging from private, public, charter, and Montessori, Anna felt that there were other conversations and essential lessons that traditional schools weren’t teaching. She became discontent with the prevalence of white supremacy and harmful capitalist ideologies within educational institutions and decided to take a break. During this time, she reflected on how her relationship with money and capitalism was affecting the way she perceived success. This break encouraged her to have conversations and do the inner work to unlearn the harmful and limiting beliefs rooted in her own mind that stem from cultural and historical oppression. As a result, she left the traditional education sector to support a team that educates underserved populations while resisting cultural and financial oppression. That team is Pockets Change!

Danyell Flowers

Publicist

Danyell is the Founder & CEO of Maven Media Management. An affiliate of FMI, Maven Media Management takes pride in thinking outside the box. We strive to promote as well as expose clients far beyond obvious realms. Offering both national and regional press outreach, Maven Media Management will work to grow and expand your reach, ignite interest and educate the public as you ready new initiatives and exciting advancements for your brand. Our goal is to continually work to develop your story and help to elevate your brand and lifestyle.

AMARI MILLS

Social Media Associate

Amari Mills leads Pockets Change community engagement strategies through social media management, collaborative content creation, and outreach e-newsletters. She is a fourth-year journalism student at the University of Tennessee. She also strengthened her creative skills as a member of the Ablaze Magazine social media team and as a former student ambassador for Niche, a college-readiness brand.