Our Management Team
Renee Schultz- Owner/Director
Renee has a varied history in working in and around financial aid for over thirty years. She was initially brought into the back end of Financial aid by working in student loan collections. All she knew was that she needed a job that had regular hours as she had a new baby (guess who that was). She worked with many different types of student loans such as NDSL’s, GSL’s, FISL’s, etc. during the Pre-Claims period and then after the student had defaulted. After getting burnt out of being on the phone ALL OF THE TIME over five years, she took a position as a Student Loan Marketing Representative with a small FFELP lender called Great Western Bank. After that merger, she took a job with Crestar Bank as a Client Manager, then when it was apparent that Crestar would be merging, she decided that enough was enough and took a job with EDFUND, a student loan guarantor. After 12 years with EDFUND as a Client Relations Manager, FFELP went away. She applied for a position with the US Department of Education as an Institutional Improvement Specialist and was excited to learn even more about financial aid. She specialized in policy, training and eligibility work in Program Compliance. Eleven years later… here we are!
Renee is married to her amazing and supportive husband, Mike. They have been married for 6 years. He is a mechanic – free tune-ups and brake jobs- yeah! She has two spectacular and beautiful daughters- Vanessa and Sabrina. Vanessa, you’ll read about below and Sabrina recently graduated from San Francisco State University. Sabrina has made it clear that she doesn’t want to be in Financial Aid forever- we’ll see…
Vanessa Kendrick- Director of Compliance
Vanessa started in financial aid as an office assistant for a Law School in San Francisco. From there she went to Patten University as a financial aid counselor. Then she worked at Paul Mitchell the School- East Bay for close to 4 years. She worked closely with admissions to help enroll students and would work with them until graduation. She continued to work her way up in financial aid positions. She worked as a Financial Aid Analyst at CSU Sacramento until landing a position as the Assistant Director of Financial Aid for the Graduate School of Management at UC Davis. Outside of work she is a wife, mother to two and an avid off roader in the Jeep community.
Ditza BenShalom- Director of Accounting and Operations
Ditza brings with her to FATSTAF over 25 years of experience in accounting and business management. She holds a degree in accounting and for approximately 25 years she has concentrated her accounting expertise in the areas of Title IV fiscal administration and Federal Student Aid compliance. Ditza demonstrates excellence and precision in her honed ability to reconcile school accounts keeping them in compliance with federal regulations. She is adept in all aspects of USDE reporting as well as auditing of student files and supervision of financial aid staff.