Pam & Dyalekt
Pamela Capalad is a Certified Financial Planner™ and Accredited Financial Counselor™ She's been in financial services since the last bad time, and we'll get through this one too. She is a cofounder at Pockets Change. Her work is centered around helping people heal their relationship with money and navigate predatory financial systems while honoring their humanity and dignity.
Dyalekt has been an MC, theaterer, and educator (mostly all at once) for over 20 years and has been in financial education since 2014. As a cofounder and Director of Pedaggoy at Pockets Change, he uses Hip Hop pedagogy to demystify personal finance and help students heal their relationship with money. He brings hip hop to places that don't know they need it but desperately do. He brings hip hop to places that don't know they need it but desperately do.
Together, they regularly teach workshops and speak on the intersection of money, art, interpersonal neurobiology, and racial economic inclusion to help people get shameless about money.
Pamela Capalad, CFP® AFC®
Pamela Capalad is a Certified Financial Planner™ and Accredited Financial Counselor™ and has been in the financial services industry since 2008. Her work is centered around helping people heal their relationship with money and navigate predatory financial systems while honoring their humanity and dignity. She co-founded Pockets Change, a Hip Hop and finance program for youth, founded and ran Brunch & Budget for 10 years, and co-founded Get Shameless, Inc. Pockets Change was honored in 2025 with the PASEsetter award for excellence in after school education.
Pam has been featured in the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, Vice Magazine, and was named New York Magazine’s Best of New York 2019. She was named one of Investments News 40 Under 40 in 2016, Financial Advisor Magazine's Young Advisors to Watch in 2019, and received AFCPE's Financial Planning Center of the Year award in 2022. Pam is a Global Good Fund Fellow, class of 2022.
She and her husband Dyalekt regularly teach workshops and speak on the intersection of money, art, interpersonal neurobiology, and racial economic inclusion to help people get shameless about money.
Dyalekt
Brian "Dyalekt" Kushner has been a hip-hop MC, theater maker, and educator for nearly 20 years. He’s the director of pedagogy at Pockets Change, where he uses hip-hop pedagogy to demystify personal finance and help students take control of their relationship with money. He is the recipients of Jump$tart’s 2022 Innovation in Financial Literacy award. He’s rocked (performed/taught/keynoted) everywhere from conferences like AFCPE and Prosperity Now, to stages like SXSW and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, to classrooms that range from Yale to your cousin’s living room.
He converted phonics lessons into rhymes for NYC DOE’s WORD UP program. His latest research-based jam is You Can Buy Happiness w/Warren Britt. He is the recipient of Jump$tart’s 2022 Innovation in Financial Literacy award, and a 2025 PASEsetter award winner.
Pam, Dyalekt, and their friend Andrea Ferrero also co-founded Pockets Change, a hip hop and finance organization for youth with a mission to change the way we talk about finance.
