Kim Olson

I'm focused on how we can use what we know about human behavior and make better public policy. In the retirement realm, half of American workers have no retirement savings plan at work. Without a work-based plan, we know people are unlikely to go get their own IRA, since people tend to procrastinate what they perceive as difficult tasks. Using this knowledge, the industry has flipped the script to start automatically enrolling people and giving them the ability to opt out of saving instead. We see a significant change in people's behavior in the opt out model - the vast majority stay in the program and save for their futures.

Across the country, 15 states have automated retirement savings programs (or auto-IRAs) built specifically for employers that do not offer a private retirement plan to their employees. Those programs have been incredibly successful, enrolling more than 1.2 million savers with over $3 billion saved in less than a decade. The majority of the people saving have never saved before, which is very exciting result.

My most notable professional achievement was helping stand up OregonSaves, which was the first automatic enrollment retirement savings program in the country. We basically had to start it from scratch, and create a new statewide program based on bill text and a theoretical concept. It launched in 2017 and it's still going strong, with more than 150,000 Oregonians now saving for retirement through the program.