About
Why I do this.
I started with food stamps. Not studying them — helping people get them. Fifteen years later, the question hasn’t changed: what are you entitled to, and how do you actually get it?
Kwame Kuadey
The Benefits Insider™
For more than fifteen years I’ve helped older Americans navigate benefits — starting with food stamps and expanding into Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and retirement planning. Along the way the audience grew to more than 350,000 people across YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok, and the videos have been watched over 30 million times.
I came to this from business, not government. I built a company to more than $60 million in revenue, earned a spot on the Inc. 500 and four appearances on the Inc. 5000, and landed a deal on ABC’s Shark Tank. Today I teach finance at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School — which is where the habit of showing the math comes from.
What pulled me into this work was a pattern I kept seeing. People understood earning a benefit. Almost nobody was taught to strategize the claim. Roughly three in ten still file for Social Security at 62; about one in five later say they regret it. Those aren’t small mistakes — research from the National Bureau of Economic Research puts the median lifetime loss from suboptimal claiming at $182,370.
That’s a solvable problem. It just requires someone to explain the rules without selling something at the end. That’s the whole job.
- Adjunct Professor of Finance, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
- Author, The Social Security Playbook: 7 Big Decisions and 75 Essential Answers
- Shark Tank alum · Inc. 500 · 4x Inc. 5000 · Entrepreneur of the Year, Maryland
- Founder, Next Chapter Media — six brands serving adults 55+
350,000+
followers across YouTube, Facebook & TikTok
30M+
views of plain-English benefits answers
15+ years
helping Americans claim what they’ve earned
WSJ · Forbes · NPR
and The Washington Post, Inc.
How I work
No panic. No politics. Just clarity.
That line isn’t decoration — it’s the editing rule. Benefits content is full of fear headlines because fear performs. I’d rather be the place you come to calm down and get an answer. Every number gets traced to SSA, CMS, or the IRS before it’s published. Every claim shows its math. When a partner pays us, we say so on the page.
The wider work
Next Chapter Media
Benefits Insider is the flagship, but the mission is bigger: retirement isn’t an ending — it’s a 25-to-40 year chapter that deserves better information than it gets.
Benefits Insider
Social Security, Medicare, and SNAP — explained for the people making the decisions.
Retirement Navigator
The podcast: benefits, retirement, aging, caregiving and more — explained on your morning walk.
The Morning Step
Two minutes of motivation and perspective to start the day.
The Insider Community
Where members ask their own questions and get real answers — plus the 14-Day Benefits Checkup challenge.
The team
Who makes this
A small team, which is deliberate. Fewer hands means every number, script, and episode passes through people who care whether it’s right.
Kwame Kuadey
Editor in Chief
Adjunct Professor of Finance at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and author of The Social Security Playbook. Writes and hosts across the brands.
Carrie Brenner
Co-Founder & Chief Content Officer
Co-founder of Next Chapter Media. Leads content strategy and production across every brand — what gets made, when it ships, and whether it meets the standard.
Belle Saldua
Podcast Producer
Produces Retirement Navigator and The Morning Step — from booking and run-of-show through the final cut.
Pauline Servillon
Content & Social Media Manager
Keeps the publishing calendar running across every platform, and creates the social content that carries our work to people who haven’t found us yet.
Working on a story, a show, or a partnership?
Bio, headshots, logos, audience data, and past appearances — everything you need, in one place.