Me, We.
Our Story. Our Founder. Our Programs.
UMEUS exists to make essential knowledge, resources, and guidance easier to access and understand.
Our Story
Where UMEUS came from and why it exists.
UMEUS began with a simple idea: people deserve financial information that is clear, trustworthy, and rooted in community. Since 2016, we’ve worked to close the gap between complex financial systems and the individuals and families navigating them every day.
Today, with support from the IRS through the Low Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC) program, we are expanding our work in Orange County, Florida — bringing free, bilingual tax education and navigation directly to the communities that need it most.
How It Started
UMEUS was founded in 2016 by Qiara Johnson, a Detroit-raised CPA who grew up watching what money — and the absence of it — did to the people around her. She watched families work hard and still struggle. She watched stress compound across generations. And she kept asking the same question: Why?
Becoming an accountant felt like the beginning of an answer. Numbers were honest. Numbers told the truth. And if she could understand them, maybe she could help the people closest to her understand them too. Then she entered corporate America. And the gap came into sharp focus.
It wasn’t just that her colleagues earned more. It was what they knew — how they thought about money, how they planned, how they talked about it at the table as if it were a language everyone spoke. The financial knowledge that enabled generational stability was flowing freely in those rooms and running dry in the communities she came from. Not because it wasn’t available. Because it had never been shared.
“The problem wasn’t just income. It was information. It wasn’t just about making more money — it was about understanding how to manage it, grow it, and pass something forward. That’s what my corporate counterparts had that my community didn’t. And I decided to do something about it.”
— Qiara Johnson, CPA, Founder & Executive Director
A Decade of Showing Up
For nearly a decade, UMEUS operated on commitment alone — no salary, no institutional funding, no infrastructure beyond belief in the mission. Qiara showed up in rooms where the information gap was most costly, and she closed it however she could.
Across those ten years, UMEUS has had the privilege of working alongside organizations serving communities that are statistically the most underserved when it comes to financial information and access. The numbers always told the same story: quantitative gaps in wealth, income, and homeownership are the measurable evidence of qualitative failures upstream. Information. Access. Education. Fix the upstream, and the numbers begin to change.
Organizations We’ve Partnered With
UMEUS has delivered programming alongside the following organizations, each serving communities where financial knowledge has the power to change outcomes:
Acclivus Inc. — 21st Century Trades & Training Boot Camp: Financial literacy curriculum for young Black men involved in the Cook County juvenile justice system. Part of a seven-phase intervention program integrating education, vocational training, and restorative justice.
Women’s Business Development Center (WBDC): Financial literacy and business financial framework programming for women entrepreneurs. The WBDC operates under the Small Business Administration network.
Best for Vets: Financial literacy education delivered alongside housing support and basic needs resources for veterans navigating life after service.
Low Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC) Program (IRS Partnership): Financial education and awareness programming delivered in English, Spanish, and Portuguese for low-income and multilingual communities. Programming covers both prevention and education — helping people understand their finances, their rights, and the tax system before issues arise — and navigation support for those actively facing IRS issues, aligning them with free resources including CPAs and tax attorneys.
Dream Life Financial Literacy Program: UMEUS-founded youth financial literacy program currently serving Chicago Public Schools through After School Matters, where students are paid to learn. Students connect one of their first major life decisions — what to do after high school — to real income data, budgeting, and a lifetime framework for empowered decision-making. See Part Three for full program details.
