Consumer credit & financial-health product
I build credit and savings products that prove they leave households better off.
Founder who built and scaled Change Machine — one of the nation's first data-driven financial-health platforms. I pair regulatory fluency with the commercial discipline to turn financial health into product strategy.
Focus
Access was the old goalpost. Outcomes are the real one.
I've spent my career asking whether products and interventions actually improve people's lives.
Most of the market measures access and engagement. For two decades I've built the impact stack on the other side of that line: consumer credit, savings, and cash-flow products, plus the measurement that proves they work, judged on savings, stability, and security rather than downloads. One conviction carries through, that a product should answer for whether it leaves households better off.
If a product can't show it improves outcomes, it isn't innovation — it's just extraction, faster.
About
From frontline advocacy to national financial-health infrastructure.
Mae Watson Grote is a consumer credit and financial-health product leader. She founded and led Change Machine (2005–2025), a financial-health technology company she built and scaled: 13,000+ practitioners across all 50 states, roughly 4,000 partner organizations, and $83M in measurable financial value returned to clients. Measured one household at a time, that value means: a first cushion against crisis; a credit score that finally clears the bar; a paycheck that stretches the month. Its ML recommendation engine — built with IBM's Data Science & AI Elite Team under Trusted-AI principles — moved product adoption from 60% to 98% before the platform was acquired by Prosperity Now.
Her work has always started from the front lines of financial insecurity, first as a welfare-benefits advocate at the Legal Aid Society, watching people do everything right and still lose ground. That work led to Change Machine, which began as a direct-service practice before becoming national product infrastructure. Across all of it her focus has held: the product choices that decide whether credit, savings, and cash-flow tools actually build household financial security. The company's outcomes framework was validated in a CFPB-commissioned randomized controlled trial, with significant gains in savings, debt, and credit.
She is Senior Advisor at Prosprous.ai, the trust layer for AI-native personal finance, and a Nonresident Fellow in the Family and Financial Well-Being division at the Urban Institute, where she analyzes how products like earned wage access and buy-now-pay-later shape household outcomes. She has advised the CFPB and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and completed the Oxford Saïd Fintech Programme in 2025. One conviction holds throughout: the people navigating financial insecurity are the experts in their own lives, and the best products are built around that expertise.
JD, City University of New York School of Law · BA, Rutgers University (Douglass College)
Selected work
What I've built.
ML Recommendation Engine
60% → 98% adoptionA classification model that turns customer-profile data into personalized, explainable product recommendations at the moment of financial decision-making; integrated into Salesforce. Built with IBM's Data Science & AI Elite Team; nominated for VentureBeat's "AI for Good."
Financial Health Outcome Framework
CFPB-commissioned RCTA practical taxonomy for measuring financial progress across savings, debt, credit, and banking — the structure that turned coaching practice into measurable outcomes, with causal impact established by a randomized controlled trial.
"Now & Later" Account Architecture
Designed & shippedA consumer product for cash-flow smoothing and goal-based savings for mass-market households — an early model for the cash-advance-plus-savings architecture now common in consumer fintech.
Data Equity Principles
Published, AI Now InstituteA framework for responsible AI governance in consumer finance, from recommendation logic to consumer data rights, and the foundation for a product-vetting mechanism.
AI-Guided Workflow Protocols
46% engagement liftData architecture and ETL pipelines that turned five years of longitudinal behavioral data into next-best-action protocols and product intelligence, across 800+ initial deployments.
Roles & recognition
Advising
Available for advising, fractional or full-time product leadership, board roles, and speaking.
Product & platform strategy
Turning financial-health outcomes into roadmaps, pricing, and design for credit, savings, and cash-flow products.
Outcome & financial-health measurement
Frameworks that establish whether a product improves savings, debt, credit, and stability — the way Change Machine's was validated by a CFPB-commissioned RCT.
Responsible AI & data equity
Governance for consumer finance, from recommendation logic to consumer data rights, grounded in Trusted-AI practice.
Writing
Selected writing
Full publication history, awards, experience, and affiliations on the CV.
Contact
Let's talk about credit, products, and outcomes.
Brooklyn, NY. Open to advising, fractional and full-time product leadership, board roles, and speaking.