Welcome to ASA’s blogs—the conversation starter on higher education debt management. Here you’ll find Industry Insider, a news-you-can-use blog for financial aid professionals; Wellness Working, which explores the “R&D” approach to finding best practices for impacting student loan repayment; and Policy Perspectives, a discussion on our nation’s public policies for financing higher education.
A recent proposal would allow financial aid officers to prevent students from overborrowing. But would more debt management and financial literacy counseling be the better solution?…Read Blog Post
Posted by Shelley Saunders on October 22, 2009 at 02:44 PM EST
Find out if the new Income Based Repayment option could be right for you.…Read Blog Post
Posted by Mike Ryan on July 10, 2009 at 03:30 PM EST
Link to the latest forms to help your students—and learn about borrowersrights.org!…Read Blog Post
Posted by Susan Nathan on May 21, 2009 at 11:33 AM EST
Mike Ryan
Vice President of Borrower Services
Michael T. Ryan is Vice President of Borrower Services for American Student Assistance, a position he has held since joining ASA in February, 2003. Mr. Ryan heads ASA’s Borrower Services Division, which is responsible for all aspects of the management and delivery of service to borrowers in ASA’s education loan portfolio, including all default prevention and recovery efforts.
In his 20-plus year career in higher education financing, Mr. Ryan has held key management positions at the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority (MEFA), and Key Education Resources (formerly Knight Tuition Payment Plans). As MEFA’s Associate Director for Programs and Operations, Mr. Ryan facilitated MEFA’s entry as a Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) provider. He also played an instrumental role in the introduction of the U. Fund, (MEFA’s Section 529 College Investing Plan), managed MEFA’s U. Plan (Prepaid Tuition Program), and was responsible for the operation of MEFA’s loan programs.
While at Knight and Key, Mr. Ryan held progressively responsible management positions, from Account Manager to Senior Vice President.
Mr. Ryan is a graduate of Merrimack College.
Susan Nathan
Vice President, Lender and School Services
Susan Nathan is Vice President of Lender and School Services at American Student Assistance (ASA)®. She has held this position since October of 2002. Ms. Nathan joined ASA in February 1987 as supervisor of the external program review unit. She has held roles of increasing responsibility in product development, operations, client management and customer service, and marketing. She has been a member of the design teams for a number of ASA’s signature products, including FASTFUND, ASA’s disbursement product, and ASA Direct, ASA’s web processing tool. She was the manager of the business plan for ASA’s major system conversion in 1998.
She is credited with the development of ASA’s nationally recognized client management team. Ms. Nathan oversees the ASA Advisory Council, and is the staff liaison to the Marketing Planning Committee of ASA’s Board of Directors.
Prior to joining ASA, Ms. Nathan was a Financial Aid Officer for Lesley College. She is a graduate of Brown University and a fellow of the Institute for Educational Leadership. She is a member of state, regional and national financial aid associations and is routinely sought by the financial aid community as a professional development trainer.
Shelley Saunders
Vice President, Strategic Services
In her current role as American Student Assistance’s vice president of Strategic Services, Shelley Saunders serves as the organization’s primary contact for Congress, as well as for national organizations such as the American Council on Education, the American Association for State Colleges and Universities, the National Association of Student Loan Administrators (NASLA), and others. Her main focus is to educate the public policy making community on the positive results American Student Assistance has realized through its focus on student loan borrower financial Wellness.
In her 12-year career at American Student Assistance, Saunders has played an integral role in several of the organization’s global projects, including designing a new client-server based life-of-the-loan processing system and developing corporate strategy and tactics. She most recently held the position of vice president of Borrower Services.
Saunders has appeared on numerous Clear Channel radio broadcasts in the Washington, D.C. area. Her areas of expertise include the public purpose role of federal student loan administrators, as well as general facts about student loan origination and repayment.
Subscribe to American Student Assistance’s RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to get our news and blog entries delivered directly to your desktop!
If you don’t have one already installed on you computer, here are some of the more popular options to download one for FREE:
For PC only
RssReader (http://www.rssreader.com)
Feed reader (http://www.feedreader.com/)
For Mac only
NetNewsWire (http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/)
NewsFire (http://www.newsfirerss.com/)
icon next to the topic that interests you.For example, you may already have an RSS Reader built into an existing homepage such as the popular examples below:
Close Window
Close Window