Welcome to another episode, the first episode of 2022.

Let's just pray that the pandemic ends.

Y'all remember the pre-pandemic world we probably don't but one of the hottest

topics we have are student loans I am somebody who married well so my wife just

paid off my student loan shout out to my beautiful bride Ellen Rucker Sellers. Yes you got to marry well

but I have here a student loan expert so we're gonna get into it. Ashley Harrington is not only

somebody who is more knowledgeable than I about all of this but she's also beautiful

brilliant and she could be whatever she wants to be in the world when she grows up.

Ashley what's going on how are you?

I am great and thank you for that wonderful introduction and you got to tell me about this whole marrying up thing and send some sense some folks my way then because I got oh no no no my friends ain't shit so you don't no no I love you too much to do that you'll be

like bakari why did you mmm so I've learned that lesson so look we start each one of

our episodes by having our guests walk us through the arc of their

career and I think it's fair to say that you're a student loan expert now, but you've had various

career stops after finishing law school at NYU. So why did you choose higher education finance

and how did you become so knowledgeable in this very nuanced area

that now is at the forefront of the political education spectrum?

So I think it starts the way a lot of things start for black folks, right?

We see this in our everyday lives.

I have student loans.

So it became a thing that I had to deal with on a regular basis.

And I got into higher ed finance

by way of general consumer protection lending policy

...