PenFed Credit Union, the nation's second-largest federal credit union, announced that James R. Schenck, president and CEO of PenFed Credit Union and CEO of PenFed Foundation, received the Economic Education Visionary Award. This award, presented to Schenck by the Council for Economic Education, recognizes individuals who successfully provide resources to equip citizens to make financially literate economic decisions.

"I am humbled to be honored alongside former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and Fidelity Personal Investing President Kathleen Murphy," said Schenck. "At PenFed our mission is empowering members of our community to achieve financial well-being. We believe our nation's financial institutions have a unique opportunity and responsibility to use their resources and platforms to deliver financial education for people of all ages. Promoting financial literacy should be included in the corporate social responsibility initiatives of financial institutions as well as the curricula of educational institutions."

Since teaching Economics and Finance at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Schenck has been dedicated to increasing economic education. For the past two years, PenFed has operated a financial education platform for school-aged children with EVERFI, a leading education technology innovator. PenFed Credit Union and PenFed Foundation also have personal finance resources for adults who might not have had the opportunity to learn about finances in school.

Schenck, along with Bernanke and Murphy, participated in a virtual award ceremony and fireside chat on the evening of October 21 with Steve Liesman, CNBC senior economics reporter.

"Inequality is a complicated thing and you have to hit it at many different fronts. You just can't hope to make a new tax program and think that's going to solve the problem," said Bernanke during the fireside chat portion of the program. "There are generations of disadvantage and financial literacy is a part of that and [lack of financial literacy] has contributed to the problem."

"There are so many people who really are intimidated by investing and therefore they get paralyzed. It's so critical the work CEE is doing to help kids and parents to have those conversations around finances," said Murphy during the fireside chat. "A silver lining of the pandemic is that more and more people are becoming engaged and they are opening investment accounts or checking their accounts more frequently. Young investors are opening accounts at record levels."

To view the 2020 CEE Visionary Award recipients' fireside chat, please visit: https://www.councilforeconed.org/visionaryawards/visionary-awards-benefit/.

About PenFed Credit Union

Established in 1935, Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) is America's second-largest federal credit union, serving over 2 million members worldwide with over $26 billion in assets. PenFed Credit Union offers market-leading certificates, checking, credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, auto loans, student loans, and a wide range of other financial services with members' interests always in mind. PenFed Credit Union is federally insured by the NCUA and is an Equal Housing Lender. To learn more about PenFed Credit Union, visit PenFed.org, like us on Facebook and follow us @PenFed on Twitter. Interested in working for PenFed? Check us out on LinkedIn. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.