Jen Stehlik’s résumé does not follow a straight line. Before she became Vice President of Education at SurgeU, she worked child abuse investigations in child protective services, raised two daughters, cared for her in-laws around the clock, and co-owned a Dairy Queen, a pharmacy, and a Little Debbie route alongside her husband.
“I’ve got a very different background than most people probably coming in,” Stehlik said, “but a very entrepreneurial background.”
With more than 15,000 students currently enrolled, SurgeU has built its entire approach around equipping people with practical tools grounded in a God-First Educational Approach. Stehlik stepped into the VP of Education role after serving as director of real estate and then student success director, a progression she describes less as a career climb and more as a calling she kept saying yes to.
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From Child Protective Services to the Classroom
Stehlik’s professional roots are in counseling and psychology. She spent years working with children in foster care and investigating abuse and neglect cases before choosing to raise her family full-time.
Over the years, she cycled through multiple roles, from business owner to director of real estate to student success director, before taking on her current VP position.
“I’ve been a lot of different things and worn a lot of different hats within the company from the inception,” she said. “But I believe in the mission.”
Her background in counseling, she says, informs how she thinks about student support. For Stehlik, that work has always been about the person, not just the material.
What Students Are Actually Paying For
SurgeU offers three modalities of learning: on-demand content students can access at any time, live online sessions where questions get answered in real time, and in-person immersive events called immersions that SurgeU holds multiple times each year. Students can network with like-minded people who are on the same journey, and Stehlik believes the combination of all three is where real learning sticks.
“The more you hear it, the better you do it,” she said. “It’s just like sit ups, you know? It takes time and consistency to develop a good working habit.”
Stehlik is equally direct about what draws students to SurgeU in the first place. It is not the curriculum.
“Our students aren’t paying for the education alone,” she said. “They’re paying for the support and the community. They’re paying for the Kingdom impact. They’re paying for all of that because you can go to YouTube and you can look up how to do creative financing, how to do wholesale. But what happens when you have a question? Can you call YouTube University?“
At in-person immersions, Stehlik has watched something unexpected unfold between SurgeU’s two primary tracks, real estate and trading. Traders tend to work quietly and independently. Real estate students gravitate toward connection. Put them in the same room, and something shifts.
“Real Estate is very much a community ‘sport’ whereas trade is a solo ‘sport,'” Stehlik adds. “When you put them in the same room, the Trade Students love seeing the community connection the Real Estate students have and are now forming their own accountability groups and thriving on the community connection.”
Choosing a Track: Personality Over Everything
For someone new to SurgeU deciding between real estate and trading, Stehlik approaches the conversation the way a counselor might, with questions rather than prescriptions.
“I would assess to see what interest the students have and make an educational assessment based on their time, resources, interests and long term goals,” Stehlik states.
Trading suits people who prefer working independently. Real estate fits those who thrive on human connection, because the work requires conversations with bankers, mortgage brokers, and other investors. For students without available funds, real estate offers entry points that require no upfront capital.
Kingdom Impact in Action
Stehlik reaches for specific students rather than broad claims when describing Kingdom impact. Her most-cited example is a woman named Ruby, who specializes in a real estate strategy called lease option, a method that helps people who cannot yet qualify for traditional mortgages get into homes while working toward eventual ownership.
“When you ask her how much money she’s made on a lease option, she refuses to tell us, but she will tell you how many families she’s helped,” Stehlik said.
Faith and financial responsibility belong together at SurgeU, and those student stories are the clearest proof of what that conviction looks like in practice.
“We are unapologetically open about our faith and about putting God first,” Stehlik said. “And I think that’s what makes us stand out from everyone else.”
Execution Over Accumulation
Stehlik is candid about what she sees as the next frontier for SurgeU. With an established curriculum already in place, she has shifted focus toward helping students act on what they have learned rather than adding more content for its own sake.
“You can do knowledge, right?” she said. “But if all you do is gain knowledge and never execute, you’re just going to spin in a circle. We have to do the execution part, too.”
To close that gap, she is building a student advisory council that meets monthly, a student-of-the-month recognition program, a public-facing student success page on the SurgeU website, and a badging system inside the student portal that rewards consistent engagement and course completion. She is also building protocols to catch students who go quiet before they disappear.
“If they have not logged into their student portal for 30 days, we best be reaching out,” she said, “because maybe they’re going through a time where they need some prayer.”