About Mapping Your Future
Mapping Your Future is a nonprofit organization committed to helping students, families, and schools navigate the higher education and student loan processes through trusted career, college, and financial aid resources. Mapping Your Future provides accurate and up-to-date information that helps students plan, prepare, and pay for higher education and contributes to national student loan default prevention efforts by providing information and services to students and their families.
Media Kit
Mapping Your Future is a national collaborative, public-service, nonprofit organization providing career, college, financial aid, and financial literacy services for students, families, and schools.
History
Mapping Your Future debuted in 1996 to provide career, college, financial aid, and money management information and services for students, families, and schools.
Through the years, postsecondary school financial aid offices have faced increasing pressure to cut costs and reduce staff and overhead. At the same time, students have required more online services available anytime, anywhere. In addition to these trends, student loan guaranty agencies (many of which are state agencies or nonprofit organizations) and others in the financial aid industry realized a need to collaborate to deliver uniform services across the country, rather than each organization spending money to develop unique services. They recognized that by working together, they could meet the needs of colleges and universities to cut costs, and provide innovative online college, career, financial aid, and financial literacy services.
The guarantors came together in 1996 to develop Mapping Your Future and immediately began offering information and services via the Internet.
The first phase of Mapping Your Future was to develop an informational website so students could access general career and college information with the ability to get specific state or regional information from the site. This service assisted over-burdened staff at financial aid offices by enabling students to get their information from a credible online source without having to request the information from the school.
The leaders also knew that they could do more than just provide information. They wanted to empower schools, students, and families with career and college-related services online and, while delivering those services, encourage individuals to pursue life-long success. They believed that by working together, the agencies could meet this goal.
Through this collaboration, Mapping Your Future created 22 Online Counseling sessions, released the MappingXpress document collection service, launched services like CareerShip and Show Me The Future, created numerous flyers and publications, provided informational webinars on a variety of topics.
In 2014, Mapping Your Future merged with Money Management International, a national nonprofit providing credit counseling and other financial wellness services. The merger resulted in the development of Mapping Your Future Financial Solutions, a program providing financial wellness services to a number of organizations, including employers and credit unions.
In 2020, Mapping Your Future became an independent organization and continues to be a national, nonprofit organization and a collaborative public-service project of the financial aid industry – bringing together the expertise of the industry to provide information and services for schools, students, and families.
Organization and Staff
Leadership
Mapping Your Future is 501(c)3 organization and has a national Board of Directors and Advisory Committee. Both the Board and Advisory Committee oversee the operations of Mapping Your Future.
The Board of Directors provides strategic direction for the organization, approves major policies and projects, and reviews and approves financials.
Board members:
- Gene Hutchins (retired)
New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and
Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority - Tracy Ireland
Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia - Will Shaffner
Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) - Cathy Mueller, Ex-officio Board member
Mapping Your Future
The Advisory Committee assists the board and the executive director with Mapping Your Future’s strategic planning and oversees various functional and project committees.
Staff
Mapping Your Future staff receives assistance and support volunteers from sponsoring organizations and from the higher education community.
Cathy Mueller
Executive Director
Cathy Mueller, a Missouri native, earned a Bachelor of Arts in communication from the University of Delaware. Before working with others to create Mapping Your Future, Cathy was a newspaper reporter and editor, a radio reporter and DJ, a television promotions writer and a public relations writer and director. When she moved to Texas in 1994, Cathy joined Texas Guaranteed as a writer. She helped launch the company’s web site and then work with a team to spearhead the launch of Mapping Your Future, which started as a cooperative venture among the country’s leading financial aid and student loan agencies. Cathy is an APR certified member of the Public Relations Society of America.
Beth Ziehmer
Customer Care Manager
Beth Ziehmer, a Missouri native, earned her Bachelor of Science degree in business administration, minoring in Spanish, from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Beth started in the student loan industry in 1991, working for the Missouri Department of Higher Education (MDHE). While at the MDHE, Beth gained a variety of experience ranging from regulatory compliance, loan guarantee, to default collections. She has worked for Mapping Your Future since 2004 in a customer care role.
Marlene Seeklander
Customer Care Representative
Marlene Seeklander, a South Dakota native, earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Dakota State University and a Master of Education degree from South Dakota State University. Marlene has spent almost her entire career in higher education, primarily in financial aid. She also spent 10 years in the student loan industry at Education Assistance Corporation. After spending 16 years as Director of Financial Aid at Lake Area Technical College, Marlene opted for early retirement in 2023. Since the summer of 2023, she spent the academic year serving in several roles at LATC. This included interim director of financial aid, financial aid consultant, and adjunct instructor in the Business program. Marlene joined Mapping Your Future in June 2024 in a customer care role.
Volunteers
Volunteers from sponsoring agencies and other industry organizations provide input in several areas, such as webinars, content, default prevention, early awareness, and publications. Since the volunteers represent various organizations across the country, Mapping Your Future’s features and services are non-proprietary, providing a neutral source of information for parents and students.
Media Contacts
Mapping Your Future encourages journalists and media representatives who need more information to contact one of the professional staff listed below. Students, families, and postsecondary school representatives who need assistance: Contact us for customer service.
Cathy Mueller, APR
Executive Director
- General information about Mapping Your Future
- Financial aid topics
- Career and college planning
- Student loans
- Student loan default prevention and debt management
- Other related education industry issues
(940) 497-0741
cathy@mappingyourfuture.org
Newsroom
Click here for all the news.
Links to Mapping Your Future
We encourage you to link to Mapping Your Future, a public-service organization providing career, college, financial aid, and financial literacy information and services.
- Postsecondary schools using Mapping Your Future’s Online Counseling are granted permission to link to this site.
- Other individuals or organizations who will not use this site for profit or other commercial purposes are granted permission to link to this site as long as the location address (URL) is not hidden (e.g., through the use of frames).
If you have questions, contact us. If you want Mapping Your Future to link to your site, learn more about our outbound link policy below.
Outbound Link Policy
Mapping Your Future may link to other websites that help our mission of providing free information and services for schools, and for students and families as they consider college, financial aid, careers, and financial literacy options. Mapping Your Future reserves the right to establish terms and conditions for placing a link on our site and will determine the location and placement of all links on the site on a case-by-case basis. We periodically review the site and links are included in the review process.
No reference or link from Mapping Your Future pages to any site or product constitutes an endorsement or recommendation by Mapping Your Future for its use. Links to other sites are provided only as a convenience for the user and do not imply any endorsement of the material on such sites or any association with their operators. Mapping Your Future does not control such sites or products and is not responsible for their content. It is important to remember that, if you leave Mapping Your Future’s site via a link to another site, the privacy policy and conditions or terms of use for that site apply to you. You are encouraged to become familiar with any external party’s privacy policy before disclosing personal information at their site, because their privacy policies and terms of use may differ from Mapping Your Future’s.
If you would like Mapping Your Future to link to your site, contact us.
Sponsors
Mapping Your Future’s Sponsors offer financial and volunteer support to this award-winning, public service website that provides career, college, financial aid, and financial literacy information and services for students, families, and schools. Mapping Your Future is thankful for their support.