2025 Financial Educator of the Year Award

We recently asked you to nominate your favorite doctor who is educating colleagues and trainees on financial matters for The White Coat Investor Financial Educator of the Year Award. While the winner gets a nice certificate and CV entry for this, they also get a cool $1,000 check to blow on whatever they want. This is the seventh year we've done this award, and past winners include:

Gaurav Agarwal Jason Mizell Scott Truhlar Stephen Pamatmat Cyril Varghese Kent Bradley

While you can be nominated every year for this award, you can only win it once. Winners must be practicing docs, and they can't be financial advisors, for-profit financial bloggers, or podcasters.

Mostly, these docs are giving formal and informal lectures to peers and trainees, developing curriculums, publishing papers, and running little personal finance ministries to help physicians and similar high-income professionals become more financially literate and disciplined. We want to encourage this behavior, so in addition to this award, we even offer slides to help you give presentations:

Presentation for Attendings Presentation for Residents Presentation for Medical Students

The slides were all updated this year. Feel free to use them, personalize them, and pass them around to anyone you think could benefit from them.

We received 85 nominations this year, including 75 who fully completed the application with a detailed description of WHY their nominee should win. These nominations were for 20 different doctors. The nominees included:

Andrew Pirotte Casey Campbell Craig Griebel Daniel Farkas Frank Hwang Abhinav Markus Dave Berman Gayle Galletta Gregory Avey Josh Daily Karambir Khangoora Thomas Liu Viraj Desi Viraj Modi Esteban Davila Keegan Tupchong Mark Moubarek Matthew Lipton Naomi Ambalu Patrick Pirotte

Congratulations to all of the nominees (several of whom have been nominated for multiple years). Thank you for what you are doing for your colleagues and trainees.

Honorable Mentions

Three doctors, in particular, stood out this year—both in the sheer number of nominations and in what they have been doing. We'd like to mention two of them as honorable mentions (sorry, no prize for that), and then we'll tell you about this year's award winner.

Craig Griebel

Craig was nominated 13 times this year, and for good reason.

“For decades, Dr. Griebel has been a cornerstone of our residency in many areas of education, but his dedication to the well-being and future success of our residents through financial education goes above and beyond. Not only has his spirit of mentorship been a constant resource for our residents, but it has extended to medical students and faculty, as well. Dr. Griebel has consistently demonstrated an unwavering commitment to equipping our residents with the financial literacy often overlooked in medical training. For years, he has voluntarily hosted regular financial education lectures. These sessions are thoughtfully prepared and expertly delivered conferences that cover a comprehensive range of topics that are so important to the success of our residents' financial futures. From the basics of saving for retirement, through investment navigating and understanding how to obtain appropriate insurance coverage, Dr. Griebel covers it all in his structured quarterly lecture series. He empowers our residents to make informed decisions that will serve them well throughout their careers and beyond. While his upcoming retirement in the next two years marks the end of an era, we believe his enduring legacy, particularly in the realm of financial education, deserves this prestigious recognition.”

Gayle Galletta

Once more, we had a very close competition, and all of us on the committee who were choosing a winner felt this award could have gone to either Gayle or our eventual winner. Gayle had 14 nominations detailing the extensive work she has done to promote financial literacy, including:

Lectures to the UMass EM residency Purchasing WCI books for EM interns Finding WCI Champions in MS1 classes to distribute the WCI Student Guide to their peers Two-time WCICON speaker WCI Scholarship essay judge for seven years running Founder of the UMass EM Financial Literacy Interest Group Speaker at Massachusetts ACEP Meeting Speaker at Worcester District Medical Society Medical Student Workshop on Finances Additional lectures to other residency programs

Our Winner, Viraj Modi

Viraj was nominated an astounding 34 times this year, the most that someone has ever been nominated for this award and almost half of the nominations we received overall. He has clearly had a long-standing formal and informal financial education program for medical students, residents, and his colleagues. Nominees cited his formalized and repeated lecture series for medical students transitioning to residency and residents transitioning to attendings.

“As a leader in curriculum development at the medical school, Dr. Modi has played a pivotal role in shaping financial literacy programs for residents and medical students. His ongoing efforts to bridge the gap between medicine and financial education make him a truly deserving candidate for this award.”

And another comment:

“At the medical school level, his ‘Transition to Residency' and financial education course for fourth-year medical students has become incredibly popular. He also dedicates time outside of his clinical responsibilities to educate residents and young attendings on practical financial strategies.”

Dozens of nominees cited personal experiences with Dr. Modi and his influence on them to boost their own financial knowledge and discipline. His work has clearly been done over many years and over a wide swath of students, trainees, and colleagues. When we have 34 nominations, just choosing the winning nominator (who gets a free WCI online course) is no small task. However, we think the best nomination came from Dr. Matthew Martin.

“It is with great enthusiasm that I write in support of Dr. Viraj Modi, DO, FACP, for the Financial Educator Award. Dr. Modi serves as an attending physician in the Division of General, Geriatric, and Hospital Medicine at the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center and was recently promoted to Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine. An achievement that reflects both his clinical excellence and his deep commitment to mentorship and education.

Financial wellness is an area that often receives little attention in medical training, especially during the chaotic early days of residency. I can remember vividly how overwhelming it felt at the very start, even before our first official day on the job! I felt so unprepared to address the benefits that came with employment such as health insurance plans, the options of retirement accounts and plans, as well as budgeting and making financial decisions without a strong foundation. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Modi in both the inpatient and outpatient setting.

Dr. Modi took time out of his busy schedule to check in with myself and many of my colleagues to ask if we had any questions about our retirement accounts or investing in general. It was clear that he understood how new and intimidating this process could be for many of us. He patiently shared his own insights, encouraged us to start small, and provided practical advice on how to invest and diversify safely—to understand the risks and optimize growth over time. Dr. Modi aimed not just to educate, but to inspire us to shape our own paths toward financial freedom and long-term security.

What makes Dr. Modi’s mentorship so impactful is that it feels personal. He creates an environment where asking “simple” questions is encouraged, and he genuinely wants his trainees to feel empowered; not just as physicians, but as financially literate adults prepared for the future. His consistent efforts have had a tangible impact on the way [me] and many of my colleagues approach personal finance, and those lessons will stay with us long after training.

Dr. Modi exemplifies the spirit of the Financial Educator Award, and I can think of no one more deserving of this recognition. His commitment to financial education has not only shaped my own approach to personal finance, but has also fostered a culture of empowerment and mentorship within our institution. I carry his lessons with me and feel inspired to pay it forward; to share knowledge, encourage openness, and help others feel confident in their financial decisions, just as he did for me.

Sincerely,

Matthew J Martin, DO, MS
PGY3 Internal Medicine Resident
Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University”

 

Congratulations to Dr. Modi for being named the 2025 WCI Financial Educator of the Year and to Dr. Martin for nominating him!

What do you think? What will you do in the next year to help your colleagues and trainees become more financially literate and disciplined?

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