KENTUCKY — Throughout Women's History Month, we celebrate the contributions of women and remember the sacrifices made by women, for women to help make the world, and our country, a more inclusive place.

Allison Ball (R) is serving her second and final term as Kentucky State Treasurer and when she was first elected, she was the youngest female statewide elected official in the entire United States. 

Since Treasurer Ball has been in office, she has helped create the Kentucky Financial Empowerment Commission which is committed to providing resources and supporting Kentucky educators who teach financial literacy. 

"It's a hot button issue for me. It's something I believe in. I was a bankruptcy attorney before becoming treasurer and it's essential. I was a bankruptcy attorney before becoming treasurer. And I really got to see a need for helping people learn how to manage their money because a lot of times people get into trouble or just have issues that come up because they've never been trained. And it doesn't even matter what education level you have. You may be a medical doctor and you've just not been trained in this. So I did two things originally to address this issue. One was to get a high school requirement. That you have some training on financial literacy before you're through with school and that is now the law of the land. But I had to figure out how to make sure schools and other groups have what they needed to be able to teach kids financial literacy lessons. So I launched the Kentucky Financial Empowerment Commission and I love that phrase because I think it's not really just financial literacy. You know, if you are good with your money, if you've been taught how to make good financial decisions that you have empowerment, you know, you really are empowered to do so many things in your life. So the Financial Empowerment Commission provides resources and training for financial literacy. We actually do provide resources to schools because the high school mandate was a unfunded mandate as many things are from Frankfort," said Treasurer Ball.

In December 2016, STABLE Kentucky was launched which allows Kentuckians with disabilities to save and invest money without losing access to benefits they receive such as Medicaid or social security. It's something Ball said she's very proud of.

"It has its own website, so if anybody wants to look at that they can, but it is a savings and investment program for people with disabilities. And without one of these kinds of accounts, you really can jeopardize your benefits if you're someone who receives benefits. So without this, you're only allowed to have $2,000 at a time. If you have one of these accounts, you can have up to $16,000 a year or more if you're employed. A lot of these folks are employed, so they can get an extra almost $13,000 If they're employed. We really saw this to be very important last year and the year before that because people were getting stimulus checks and sometimes for the first time ever getting checks from the government, in large chunks like that. So we had a number of people that if they had not had a stable account, it would have jeopardized their benefits and you don't want that that wasn't the purpose of giving people stimulus check," explains Treasurer Ball.

Senate Bill 205 requires the state treasurer to draft and maintain a list of financial companies that have engaged in energy boycotts. State Treasurer Allison Ball says this bill is important to support energy independence.

"I'm an Eastern Kentucky and a ninth generation from Floyd County from the coal fields and I really do pay attention to the traditional energy world fossil fuel, oil and gas, coal in Kentucky and there's a bill right now that I'm supporting how a Senate Bill 205 and it would look at any companies that are boycotting fossil fuel companies, the fossil fuel industry. I think that's been sort of a move that's been happening in the last few years. And this is a way to protect those signature industries and Kentucky and it says if you as a company are are boycotting this industry in Kentucky, then we're not going to do business with you as a state," explains Ball. 

You can watch the full In Focus segment above.