The four basic pillars of any professional field—quality, consistency, accountability, and community – are attracting increasing focus from financial empowerment stakeholders across multiple sectors. When the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund and Citi Community Development released a call for essays to gather observations and best practices on financial counseling and coaching through the lens of these professional pillars, we were astonished by over 100 responses from across the country. As you read through the essays, you’ll notice that within each of the professional pillars, experiences and priorities span a broad and energizing spectrum. Yet ringing clearly through each essay we were able to include here, and the dozens and dozens we were not, is a strong stream of passionate commitment to, and tangible consensus for, providing services at a professional level, a field ready to be held to that standard, and the appetite to work together to support that evolution.