Left to right: Nicole Perry, Sarah Sable.

September 12, 2022

NYC Kids RISE, a nonprofit organization working with the City of New York and the Department of Education to manage the Save for College Program, today announced the appointment of Nicole Perry as Chief Platform Officer, and Sarah Sable as Chief Financial Empowerment Officer.

The arrival of these two new executive team members who have extensive experience in financial services, economic development, and financial empowerment, comes as the Save for College Program—the scholarship and savings platform designed to make college and career training more accessible and achievable for all NYC public school students, starting in kindergarten, regardless of family income or immigration status—starts its second year of operating citywide. These newly created roles will be instrumental to the evolution and success of the Program as a universal decentralized community driven wealth building platform for New York City neighborhoods.

After launching as a pilot in geographic School District 30 in 2017 with the founding support of the Gray Foundation, the Save for College Program expanded from partnering with 39 to more than 1,000 schools and from 13,000 to more than 80,000 students citywide this past school year. The public-private-community partnership—co-created through a collaborative process that engaged families, schools, community-based organizations, civic associations, local leaders, businesses, and other public and private-sector partners—will welcome approximately 65,000 new students each school year, ultimately reaching nearly every elementary school student in the City’s public school system.  Now, part of what it means to start kindergarten in NYC is that you will have an asset for your future.

“Since its inception, the Save for College Program was designed to operate at a citywide scale and support the ecosystem of stakeholders and institutions that impact a student’s ability to build financial assets and expectations of success,” said Debra-Ellen Glickstein, Founding Executive Director of NYC Kids RISE. “As our first-ever Chief Platform Officer and Chief Financial Empowerment Officer, Nicole and Sarah’s leadership, expertise, and experience will help actualize this vision, playing a pivotal role in our collective work to provide a tool to communities to build wealth, and to support all our children to reach their dreams and highest potential. We are thrilled to welcome them to our team.”

In her role as the Chief Platform Officer, Nicole Perry will manage programmatic operations and lead efforts to integrate the platform into the infrastructure of neighborhoods. She will oversee technical assistance and capacity building with a wide range of stakeholders through a neighborhood-based, networked approach, and work to support the ongoing co-creation of the platform with communities.

As Chief Financial Empowerment Officer, Sarah Sable will lead and manage the effort to support public school families in understanding the Save for College Program, completing the foundational steps, known as Building Blocks, and saving in the ways and amounts that make sense for them.

About Nicole Perry

Nicole Perry joins NYC Kids RISE with a wide range of public, nonprofit, and private sector experience in economic development, financial services, and consulting. Most recently, she served as Deputy Commissioner of Executive Affairs and Chief of Staff at the NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS) where she acted as strategic advisor to the Commissioner of SBS and provided management oversight on key agency initiatives. Among her leadership roles in City government, Nicole also served as the Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE) at the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), overseeing the fulfillment of OFE’s mission to educate, empower, and protect New Yorkers and communities with low incomes so they can improve their financial health and build assets. Prior to DCWP, Nicole served as the Director of Sales & Marketing and the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners, Senior Vice President at Citigroup, and as a Peace Corps Small Business Development Volunteer in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

Nicole is an Advisory Board member of Seeds of Fortune, a nonprofit organization that empowers young women of color in high school by helping them find affordable college options and build critical financial management and career development skills, and has served in various volunteer and mentorship roles in her community, workplace, and for her alma maters. She holds an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University.

About Sarah Sable

Sarah Sable served as the Chief Program Officer for Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners for 10 years where she led a team of 35 providing financial empowerment services across five programs reaching 11,000 low-income individuals annually. During her tenure Sarah worked to transform Neighborhood Trust from a New York City community-based organization to a technology led social enterprise, serving people across 40 states.

Prior to Neighborhood Trust, Sarah worked at The Bridgespan Group where she provided strategy consulting to a diverse portfolio of organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wikimedia Foundation, and Central Territory of the Salvation Army. Before that, she worked in microfinance at Accion NY where she originated and managed a portfolio of small business loans and developed a disaster relief loan and grant program to support businesses in Lower Manhattan and Chinatown that were impacted by September 11. As a Henry Luce Scholar and Freeman Fellow, Sarah provided strategic planning and capacity building support for the Ningxia Center for the Environment and Poverty Alleviation’s microfinance program in China. Sarah holds an MPA from Princeton University and BA from Barnard College.