Naomi Castellano

After a decade managing procurement budgets at a Fortune-500 logistics firm in Denver, Naomi Castellano walked away from the corporate ladder to figure out why so many of her colleagues were still drowning in student loan debt well into their forties — and what nobody had bothered to tell them sooner. She now leads a small research and writing team in Salt Lake City, digging into federal loan servicing policy, SAVE plan mechanics, and the fine print that borrowers rarely read until it's too late, and she presented her findings on income-driven repayment gaps at the 2023 Mountain West Financial Empowerment Summit. Her work has been informed by CFPB complaint data, Federal Student Aid publications, and a stubborn belief that the right question almost always matters more than the conventional answer.