Jeremy Chandler is a finance student at Northeastern University, a Students For Liberty (SFL) Regional Coordinator, and an up-and-coming young entrepreneur. Last year, he founded Little Liberty, a financial consultancy dedicated to promoting financial literacy in historically underprivileged communities in the Boston metro area with a particular focus on low-income families and youth from communities of color.
Jeremy’s journey as a successful entrepreneur committed to helping his community started when he connected with a fellow SFL Coordinator who was also interested in creating a better socio-economic landscape for the black community. Having realized that pro-liberty ideas could vastly improve the lives of individuals in disadvantaged neighborhoods, together, they started a project called “Operation: Black Liberty.” The goal: draw more people of color into SFL and the liberty movement in general. “From there,” said Jeremy, “Little Liberty was born.”
The idea of making an impact had grown more prominent: To help the black community prosper, Jeremy focused his actions on improving economic and financial literacy. Speaking about this initiative, Jeremy noted, “Through my research, I have found that credit scores in Boston’s blackest neighborhoods average below 600. Through Little Liberty, I have pledged to raise average credit scores in these neighborhoods to at least 700 by 2030 through education partnerships, workshops, and direct credit assistance.”
Jeremy attributes his success to the SFL network and resources. “I honestly would not have thought of starting my own business without being given the freedom as a Local Coordinator to go out and just do, knowing I had Students For Liberty backing me up,” he said. “I’ve been an activist in my community since I was 13, so now that I have these resources, I feel even more compelled to bring them into my community through pragmatic means.”
As the 2021 SFL LibertyLabs financial grant winner, Jeremy received financial support for his innovative business idea. “It was monumental for the startup of our size, in such an early stage of development,” he stated. Jeremy invested some of the money in the secondary market research, which helped him broaden the scope of the project, and include benefits management in addition to financial services.
Jeremy sees entrepreneurship as one of the fundamental vehicles liberty-minded people need to start using to effect change in their communities. “No amount of thought relates to the impact of the action. We can’t just talk about businesses from a philosophical sense. We need to actually get our boots on the ground and build businesses that actually help people.” Such a bottom-up approach, in his opinion, allows for solving issues without state interference.
“SFL has taught me that thinking bigger is better. When you dream bigger, you achieve bigger,” concluded Jeremy. The next step for him will be opening a non-profit organization to help support black youth throughout Boston and their financial endeavors. With people like Jeremy, there is hope for a brighter future for the generations to come.
Help us create more great stories like this one!
