Helping students make consequential decisions with clearer context
Launch Plan is a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to expand access to data-driven college, career, and financial planning, helping students and families understand the real-world consequences of major life decisions before they commit.
Founded through a lens of advanced leadership
Launch Plan was founded by Philip Han while he was a Fellow with Harvard University's Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI), a program designed to help experienced leaders apply their expertise to some of society's most pressing challenges.
As an investor, Philip spent his career analyzing how decisions compound over time and how costly blind spots can become. Launch Plan applies that same lens to education and career planning.
Our mission
Launch Plan helps students understand how choices about school, major, career, debt, and location can compound into very different financial futures.
Data-driven planning
Launch Plan helps students and families understand the real-world consequences of major education, career, debt, and location decisions before they commit.
Access and equity
As a 501(c)(3) organization, Launch Plan is focused on expanding access to high-quality college, career, and financial planning tools.
Decision literacy
The platform applies a long-term investment lens to student decisions, showing how choices can compound into very different financial futures.
Leadership
Launch Plan is led by people focused on helping students and families see consequential decisions more clearly.
Founder
Philip Han
philip@launchplan.orgPhilip founded Launch Plan while he was a Fellow with Harvard University's Advanced Leadership Initiative. Prior to Harvard ALI, he was the chief investment officer at Saban Capital Group, overseeing a diversified portfolio of global investments. Philip currently serves on the Board of Directors of the UCLA Investment Company and is a Trustee with the Luskin Orthopedic Institute, where he also serves on the Investment Committee.
Strategic Advisor
Shauna Maldonado
shauna@launchplan.orgShauna brings over a decade of work inside one of the largest public school districts in the country. As an A-G ELA Advisor at LAUSD, a college instructor at Santa Monica College, and a textbook author, she has spent her career designing learning experiences for students who are the first in their families to navigate higher education. Her work with GEAR UP, a federal program focused on college access for first-generation and low-income students, gives Launch Plan its ground-level understanding of what students actually need when they're standing at the edge of a decision that will shape the rest of their lives.
Launch Plan helps students see and stress-test the futures their decisions create.
Explore the product