Still Pointing YOU in the Right Direction
In 1991, FAS was founded around the dining room table of David and Gay Gray. In short time, colleges and universities around the country were lining up to tap the services provided by FAS. Over the span of the next 31 years, under the Grays’ leadership, FAS has become a highly respected and trusted partner to over 1800 colleges and universities.
Since our founding, FAS is deeply committed to guiding colleges and universities through complex and ever-changing management and compliance challenges. To represent that vision, the compass rose has been a component of the FAS brand and logo. Today, most of us rarely use a traditional compass. Instead, we depend on GPS navigation for our guidance and direction.
As a result, we refreshed our brand and logo from the compass rose to a familiar GPS navigation icon. While the look of our website has changed, the strong commitment to our mission and core values remains unchanged. Those ultimately define who we are and what we do.
At FAS, we believe your financial aid office and student business services should be activated as your top advantage – generating greater enrollment, easier operations, and elevating your brand. We invite you to learn more about our people and our services on the updated site.
Thank you for your continued partnership. We highly value the trust and confidence you place in FAS.
David Gray
Founder & Board Member
Robert Heil
CEO
Our Mission
To empower colleges and universities to strengthen financial operations, optimize enrollment, and enhance the student experience.
Our Culture and Values
Achieving our mission starts with our culture and values. These values define who we are today and who we aspire to be. They are the core operating principles for our company and guide how we make decisions and work together to achieve our mission.
Integrity
It’s much more than just doing the right thing. We keep it real. We are open and honest in our communication with each other and with our clients. Why? Because it is the only way to solve difficult challenges. Our mission compels us to always prioritize doing the right thing for our clients and the students they serve. Our dedication to attentiveness, dependability, and accountability affords us opportunities to create deep, enduring, and loyal relationships with clients, partners and each other. This individual and corporate character makes us all better.
Relationships Matter
Every interaction is an opportunity to strengthen relationships with clients and teammates. Trust, respect, honesty, humility, care and compassion lie at the heart of our relationships. It’s one reason why our relationships with clients become long-lasting trusted partnerships. While we take our mission seriously, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Life is too short not to enjoy working with your teammates. Because our greatest accomplishments tend to happen with or through other people, we choose teamwork whenever possible to make the greatest impact for our clients and the students they serve.
Diversity and Belonging
You can’t value relationships without embracing diversity and belonging. We celebrate diversity in culture, ethnicity, identity, experiences, perspectives and thought. We realize opportunities have not always been equally available to everyone and we feel a responsibility to change that. You see this reflected in the diversity of our people and in the diversity of the clients we serve. When we discuss how to best achieve our mission, we lean into our diversity and encourage diversity of thought because it fosters understanding which leads to wise decisions. Diversity leads us to the place we desire where all team members feel a sense of belonging.
Innovation
Our mission is big. To achieve that mission, we seek an openness to new ideas, creativity and continuous learning. This always improving mindset allows us to take intelligent risks and makes us better. FAS was founded on an innovative approach and this same spirit of innovation propels us to new ways of thinking today. Innovation does not only pertain to technology and products. We expect every team and every individual in our business to embrace and create innovation. As thought leaders in our industry, we feel a high responsibility to lead the industry and power new possibilities for our clients and the students they serve.
Excellence
Our mission is significant. We’re not chasing small aspirations. We set the bar high and expect to clear it. We demand this high quality from ourselves because our clients deserve the very best.