Douglas Heagren
Douglas is Co-founder of ProCollege Planners and heads up ProCollege Planners’ College Education and Family Wealth Strategies Division. He is a graduate of Denison University, with a Bachelor of Arts – Economics degree. He is also a Certified Financial Planning practitioner, providing families with comprehensive financial advice and guidance since 2005. Prior 2005, when he began exclusively working with business owners and families, Douglas worked with corporations of all sizes to assess and implement business financial strategies to improve the well-being of both company bottom-line and employee well-being.
A successful competitive junior tennis player, Douglas was recruited to play tennis by several colleges during his high school Junior and Senior years. His dream of playing tennis in college was derailed when his parents filed for divorce during his senior year. While Douglas had the great fortune to still attend college, the process of searching and applying to college became disorganized due to family distraction, and the scope of search became limited and recruiting offers soon disappeared. Without help and guidance, Douglas soon learned that there were many opportunities that were missed which would have identified the availability of non-athletic financial aid that could have been available – had he known where and how to find it.
Fast forward several more years and additional frustration developed when Douglas father passed away after his sister’s first year in college. Douglas spent the next several years working to help his sister continue to pay for her education without any help or aid that could have been available. After Douglas began his personal wealth consulting practice, he soon learned that there were many families with unique, but similarly frustrating experiences with applying to and paying for college. What he discovered is that even when families were fortunate enough to receive any advice and guidance for college, much of the advice they received was not only inadequate, it was often wrong!
Families were actually paying more than they could have had they done no planning at all! Combined with his own experiences, Douglas set out to design a strategy to focus on helping families plan for college the RIGHT way, helping to ensure they have a simple process to find the right school – for the right price. This lead to the creation of ProCollege Planners and a greater sense of well-being for the many families who have used the CS3 process to find the school of their dreams and set up their future.
When not helping his clients families grow together, Douglas spends time with his wife, Dawn, and his two children (he’s already planning college for!) Katherine and Oliver. Douglas still enjoys playing tennis, taking to the skies with his pilot license, being outdoors fishing, hunting and cheering on The Ohio State Buckeyes sports teams.
Craig Cowles
Craig is Co-founder of ProCollege Planners. He is a graduate of Excelsior College with a Bachelor of Science Degree and attended the University of Arizona. He also has a graduate certificate in Financial Planning from the University of Georgia Terry College of Business and is a Certified Financial Planning(tm) practitioner.
Craig’s journey to college was simple: it was the college in town. There was no visiting of campuses or doing a large scale search of what would work, so he just went to the most convenient and affordable for his family. He really wanted to go to an aviation school, but were unaffordable to his parents due to the flight cost. His parents really did not have planning help, and knew nothing about family contributions and how there was help out there.
Craig just wants to help other families out there with making the right choices. He has over 20 years of experience with personal planning, so he truly understands how a family’s personal wealth works giving him greater insight into college planning.
He is currently a pilot, having gone from an aviation career to his roots of general flying. He has a wife and two boys, both who will be attending college in the future.