A path back to financial freedom for borrowers

I've spent my whole life motivated by one thing: helping people, and being there for them. My first job was managing the student loan default rate at an art college in Philadelphia, one person sitting with borrowers one at a time, making sure they had the information they needed to succeed and someone in their corner during the hard stretches. By the time I left, we had the lowest default rate in the entire school system. I went on to spend twenty-five years in higher education finance, working every side of student lending, from the financial aid office to the lenders and servicers themselves.

But no matter how much good information people get, not everyone makes it through. And for private student loan borrowers who cross the line into default, there simply isn't anything out there. It's no one's fault. Lenders and servicers genuinely try to help people stay on track, but private loans have no safety net behind them, no income-driven plans, no rehabilitation, no forgiveness. Once a borrower hits that point, there's no turning back. Good people with steady jobs end up stuck, not because anyone failed them, but because the path back never existed.

GradMerge was created to build that path. We find the borrowers stuck in private loan default and connect them with a licensed lending partner willing to offer a real way out: one fixed payment, an end to the collection calls, and a fresh start. We're not a lender, and we never charge borrowers a fee. I started my career making sure students had what they needed to stay out of trouble. GradMerge is how I'm there for the ones the system couldn't catch.