How Eva Liu Is Helping Nonprofit Professionals Build Wealth

For years, Eva Liu watched her immigrant parents pour themselves into their small restaurant, working long hours with extraordinary dedication. And yet, despite how hard they worked, meaningful retirement savings remained out of reach.

That experience shaped Eva’s understanding of money early on. It showed her that hard work alone does not always lead to financial security, and that stability is about far more than numbers. It creates agency, dignity, and choice.

Inspired by what she witnessed growing up, Eva has dedicated her work to making wealth-building more accessible to nonprofit professionals, the very people devoting their lives to serving others. Over the past decade, she has worked alongside grassroots nonprofits and seen the financial sacrifices so many make in order to support their communities. While conversations around burnout and mental health have become more common in the nonprofit world, Eva believes financial health is still too often overlooked, even though financial stress shapes nearly every part of a person’s well-being, future, and sense of possibility.

Through Origami Wealth, Eva helps nonprofit professionals build greater financial freedom with accessible, actionable, and values-driven wealth-building support. Here, she shares the story behind her work and the mission that continues to guide it.

What are some of the most meaningful impacts your business has had so far?

For me, it isn’t about a number. It's seeing people who once felt overwhelmed by their finances and who avoided them now beginning to approach money with confidence and intention.

Many nonprofit professionals spend years putting everyone else's needs ahead of their own. They struggle to recognize that their financial well-being is essential to sustaining the work they do for others. One of the biggest shifts is seeing people realize that investing in themselves is not selfish, but essential.

This mindset shift creates room for action. Individuals have built emergency savings funds, increased their net worth by 7.5% in just four months, improved their credit scores by more than 100 points, paid off over $10,000 in outstanding tuition debt, and started saving for retirement for the first time. One individual was able to apply for U.S. citizenship because they finally felt confident about how they would pay for it.

Perhaps most importantly, people often describe feeling lighter because they have a plan and can see themselves making progress toward their goals. Helping people build wealth is important, but helping them build self-trust, agency, and a belief that they are worthy of financial freedom is the impact I'm most proud of.

Can you delve deeper into the evolution of your company's mission and values over time?

While our vision and values have remained remarkably consistent, they evolve along with our mission. The vision is a world where financial freedom—defined on one's own terms—is accessible to all. Our values serve as guideposts for how we pursue that vision.

As we've continued to learn from the nonprofit professionals we serve, we've spent a great deal of time asking how to make personalized wealth-building support accessible to more people without losing the trust, empathy, and individualized guidance that make it effective. That question has led us to experiment with different models, from one-on-one financial coaching to leveraging an AI financial wellness assistant that provides support between coaching sessions.

Our values help us navigate the trade-offs along the way. If, for example, we truly want to expand access, what can we charge while remaining sustainable? If we want to cultivate agency, how do we help people make informed decisions rather than simply tell them what to do? The answers continue to evolve, but our commitment to helping nonprofit professionals build greater financial freedom remains unchanged.

In what ways have your upbringing or past experiences contributed to how you operate as an entrepreneur?

Growing up in Chicago's Chinatown, I watched my immigrant parents work incredibly hard running a small restaurant while still facing challenges in building long-term financial security. Their experience taught me that outcomes are shaped not only by individual effort, but also by circumstances, opportunities, and systems that are often outside a person's control.

Today, that lesson shapes how I operate as a founder and leader. I start by understanding the people I serve—their goals, values, and realities—and then build around those needs rather than my own assumptions. My experiences across finance, consulting, philanthropy, and the nonprofit sector each added a different perspective, from understanding how financial systems and institutions operate to learning how strategy, execution, and community voice shape outcomes. It has also taught me to approach challenges with humility, recognizing that even when someone does everything "right," things do not always work out as planned. That perspective influences not only what I build, but how I build it.

What would you tell your younger self if you were to start your entrepreneurial journey all over again?

Spend less time worrying about everything that could go wrong and more time imagining what could go right. We often default to analyzing risks, anticipating obstacles, and focusing on what we're afraid of, but we rarely spend the same amount of time considering the possibilities if things go well.

Looking back, so much of my journey was shaped by experiences, skills, and relationships that seemed unrelated at the time, but ultimately came together in ways I never could have predicted. The work I do today draws on lessons from my upbringing, finance, consulting, philanthropy, and the nonprofit sector, yet I could not have mapped that path in advance.

You don't need to have every step figured out before you begin. Stay curious, keep learning, and trust that opportunities often emerge from places you never expected. When fear shows up, ask yourself not only, "What am I afraid of?" but also, "What might be possible if this works?"