When I moved to Fort Myers, Fla., in 2000 to write a thrice-weekly sports column, I quickly learned that the city’s most famous athlete had a rocky relationship with his hometown and the local media.
Deion Sanders was born and raised in that city, once deemed America’s most segregated, where the railroad depot kept whites and Blacks separated into the 1970s. Back in town while starring at Florida State in the mid-’80s, Sanders was arrested at a mall for allegedly trying to steal. He was arrested again in Fort Myers — in 1996 when he played for the Dallas Cowboys — for trespassing and fishing on a private lake at the airport.
He generally never trusted city leaders, the cops or the media.
YouTube sensation Jake Paul vows to knock Mike Tyson out. Such bravado is typical at media events to hype a boxing match, often followed by the fighters standing inches apart and glaring before one shoves the other or throws a punch. Tyson and Paul pushed and jabbed playfully Sunday after promoting their November bout, previously scheduled for July but postponed when Tyson suffered an ulcer flareup. The former heavyweight champion says he’s fully recovered and resumed training a few weeks ago. “It’s happening,” he said at the press conference in New York. “I’m ready.”
Paul promised to give Tyson “his end in boxing” and “discipline you like a son,” calling him an “old-ass motherf—-r.”
Which brings us to the actual problem: This officially sanctioned match could be tantamount to elder abuse before it ends.
I learned that America was exceptional at an early age, way before high school. There was the United States, nation of no wrongs, followed by every other country. Despite the treatment of Native Americans and Mexicans, kidnapped Africans and late-19th-century immigrants from Ireland and Italy (before they were granted white privilege), we were No. 1! It said so right in the textbook.
As an avid sports fan during childhood, I didn’t question the concept of American exceptionalism. We clearly were the bomb in a geo-political sense. But the NBA and NFL bemused me by using “world champions” to describe their title winners. Major League Baseball, presumptuous to the max, went further by calling its championship the “World Series.”
As a young’un, I thought we were tripping. Team USA sprinter Noah Lyles still feels that way as a 27-year-old Olympic gold medalist.
When Kristen Castell signed on to become executive director of The Center for Accelerating Financial Equity (CAFE) in July, she never doubted the nonprofit’s value and critical mission. Her belief was reinforced when more than 60 companies nationwide applied to join the organization’s inaugural cohort of the Fintech Accelerator Program, which launched in March.
“These are financial technology — or fintech — companies that arein the early or growing stage,” says Castell, formerly a corporate financial services pro before joining CAFE. “They have products in market towards this mission of somehow helping people’s financial well-being. Many of them are business to business, so they sell to large financial institutions like banks or credit unions or others.”
CAFE is a spoke in the wheel at the FinTech Innovation Hub, a six-story building located on theUniversity of Delaware’s STAR Campus. Six companies in the inaugural accelerator program will tackle issues like funding, partnerships, data science and regulations — areas of focus in the Hub’s mission to improve financial health in underserved, underrepresented, and low-to-moderate income communities.
“The idea is transforming the financial system to be more inclusive,” Castell says. “There’s a huge need, which the pandemic exacerbated. The question is how we’re building for the future so people are more secure. Financial security is how people are secure and have better lives, in terms of their housing, their food security, their families, their education, all of it.”
Before COVID accelerated the prevalence of fintech, Mike Bowman recognized the industry’s growth and partnered with Discover Bank to build the Hub. As president and CEO of Delaware Technology Park, Bowman wanted a place committed to helping the 6 million American households that are unbanked (meaning they have no access to a bank account).
“Fintech really took off after COVID because people were staying home,” says Bowman, whose nonprofit owns the Hub building. “Pretty soon, everything you can transact, you could do on your phone or your computer without going anywhere. With Delaware being known for its financial services, we wanted to be sure we’re at the cutting edge of that.
“The building is dedicated to the digital services that make fintech happen,” Bowman says. “It also has a second purpose: to see if we can help improve the issues of financial equity and health for the low-to-moderate income populations. The gap is getting bigger and bigger.”
A MULTI-PRONGED ATTACK
Improving people’s financial health and well-ness is a massive undertaking that requires collaboration among multiple stakeholders.
The University of Delaware has several teams in the Hub, including the College of Engineering, the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, and the Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships. The state’s Small Business Development Center has office space, too. So do fintech-related firms in data analytics and software development.
“The problems and challenges related to this are really complex,” says Tracy Shickel, UD’s associate vice president for corporate engagement and a CAFE advisor. “You can’t do that alone as a university. You can’t do that alone as a business, and the government certainly can’t do it alone. I think the important thing is this model where everybody’s got a seat at the table and we’re working together to make Delaware and the nation more financially well and healthy.”
Increasing financial literacy is one key to assisting unbanked and underbanked house-holds. (A household that is underbanked owns an FDIC-insured checking or savings account, but regularly uses alternative financial services.) Carlos Asarta, a UD professor of economics, is co-director of education and outreach at the Hub. That outreach includes “Lunch & Learn” sessions, held twice a month and financially supported by Discover Bank, which bring together community members andHub tenants for conversations.
“We discuss challenges that individuals and businesses are facing, and what our researchers are working on,” Asarta says.“Then we open up the floor for discussion. We’re seeing a lot of collaborations taking place. The Hub is serving as a way to bring the entire ecosystem together.”
In April, the Hub hosted the inaugural Fintech and Financial Institutions Research Conference, sponsored by UD and The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The conference was designed as a forum for presenting and sharing current research related to fintech organizations and the greater financial services systems.
There have also been collaborations with the fintech center at Baltimore’s Historically Black College or University (HBCU) Morgan State University. Asarta and teammates have visited multiple times and Morgan State students were invited to join UD students in an event called “Spark! In 5” where each speaker presented their research and ideas on financial health in five minutes to a large audience.
“If you think about the Hub, it’s not just our community and our students and our faculty,” Asarta says. “We’re branching out and working with other institutions that have the same mission. It’s super exciting.”
PROCEEDING WITH CAUTION
Well-intentioned researchers and business owners aren’t the only groups excited about the expanded use of fintech. Plenty of bad actors are eager to engage in fraud at individuals’ expense. The Hub helps fintech providers remain vigilant in ensuring that their products are trustworthy.
“There are a lot of scammers out there,” says Ben duPont, managing director of Chartline Capital, which oversees Discover’s $36 million Financial Health Improvement Fund. “We can use technology and startups to help identify and call them out. Venture capital plays a role in helping these companies get started.”
Fintech companies can’t devote all of their attention to finding solutions for consumers. Equal energy must be allotted toward preventing fraudulent activity that builds mistrust among the unbanked. “I think solutions and preventive measures are merging,” duPont says. “They’re not separate and they’re merging from a regulatory point of view, for good reason.” Bowman, who also serves as director of Delaware’s Small Business Development Center, says the Hub works with the American Fintech Council to improve cybersecurity and build consumer confidence.
“We’re developing students through our programs and we’re also teaching it to the community,” Bowman says. “It’s not just the ability of a device or how well it works and how easy it is. We also want to make sure it’s not fraudulent or easily hacked. There’s a lot of seminars, webinars and products that come up around the issues.”
Shickel says one of the Hub’s first funded research projects involved theCollege of Engineering and the state’s Department of Transportation developing a system for secure transactions using digital identification. Another deals with the issue of mobility equity —financial health for individuals who don’t own a vehicle and can’t get to work.
“We’re aiming to develop a national center of excellence that creates technology solutions that will enable people to transact business in the hours that they want to transact business and to trust the system because information is secure and authenticated and protected,” Shickel says. “There is a continuum of needs and the FinTech Innovation Hub will serve to engage various stakeholders to address fundamental barriers to participation in the financial system.”
Bowman says there’s “no silver bullet” to address FinTech equity and improve financial well-being. But the Hub is “chipping away at the problem” with many, many little steps.
“We’re working on products to help and we’ve already funded four, with others to come,” he says. “There are a lot of different pieces to this puzzle because the populations are quite different.”
There’s a place for all of them at the FinTech Innovation Hub.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a lecture entitled “The Other America” in March 1968, outlining our nation’s schizophrenic dualism. “There are two Americas,” he proclaimed.
U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos demonstrated as much six months later, each raising a gloved fist for Black power while “The Star-Spangled Banner” played at the Mexico City Olympics. The Summer Games have been our time to make a statement since 1904 when hurdler George Coleman Poage became the first African-American to win an Olympic medal. And ain’t nothing changed.
Sports contain metaphors for life and lessons on commitment, sacrifice, winning and handling defeat. They’re taught in a universal language that’s understood by every athlete around the world. But extraterrestrial visitors would have a skewed picture of the United States if their observations were based solely on Team USA.
Adam Rottman says he and his fellow officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have one of the world’s most interesting jobs. As Area Port Director in Baltimore, Rottman leads an undisclosed number of officers and specialists who inspect vessels and cargo for almost anything you can imagine.
“For example, we do inspections on importations and exportations of cargo,” says Rottman, who assumed his current position in October 2018. “So we’re looking for weapons of mass destruction. We’re looking for counterfeit NFL Jerseys, on the other side of the spectrum. We’re looking for trade violations. Of course, we’re always looking for narcotics. One of the big things we are focused on right now is the recovery of stolen vehicles.”
He said the CBP’s Area Port of Baltimore is No. 2 in the nation in recovering stolen cars being exported from the United States, a success rate that’s garnered coverage from several media outlets. Other headlines read like an episode of “Cops.” Rottman’s officers have seized toys with unsafe levels of lead and snared a $688,000 shipment of an illegal weight-gain product. They’ve intercepted $314,000 worth of fake Converse sneakers and used a pup from their “Beagle Brigade” to sniff out prohibited agriculture products that potentially carry invasive species or diseases.
“And then there’s the whole immigration piece to the job,” Rottman says. “At the seaport, we do immigration for crew members arriving on cargo ships, and we have the cruise terminal, too. And of course, we’re at BWI [Thurgood Marshall Airport]. Our job covers every spectrum of international trade and travel facilitation as well as enforcement. It’s just something different every day.”
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