Maura Cunningham, Founder & CEO, Rock The Street, Wall Street, joins ChedHER to discuss how this nonprofit provides financial and investment programs for high school girls, and why it's important to get girls interested in finance at such a young age.

chedHER

Rock The Street, Wall Street: Teaching Girls the Importance of Finance

and joining us now is Mara Cunningham founder and Ceo of Rock the Street Wall Street Maura, thank you so much for joining us. Tell us more about how this organization came about because it's obviously very needed. Uh Well that's very simple. Um I was in the profession for 25 years. I started off on Wall Street and um for those 25 years I was typically the only producing female in my office and then at the industry conferences or should say the company conferences, there would be maybe 200 men and if we were lucky, maybe eight women and it was typically the same eight women every year. So I thought this has to change. And so I launched it for that reason along with um I have very some very smart women friends who uh just throw their hands up when it comes to money. And so I beg to differ with them that they can handle uh some of their own investments um with professional help, but they, they absolutely needed some help. And so I said, look this, this has to start at an earlier age that women understand that they can do financial math. So tell us about the programs and what you offer for high school students. What do they learn in these programs? So we are a financial and investment literacy program designed to spark the interest of a diverse population of high school girls into careers in finance. So we have two missions. One is the financial and investment literacy program and then in addition to that we are also catapulting them into a profession in finance where their front door in getting into Internships and entry level positions. So there's four programs that we offer. One is our series of classroom workshops that are held at each of the high schools that were in, which were in about 64 high schools across the United States Canada. And now the UK you can tell from the banner behind me, we're launching in London this coming actually this week, this month and then also in Honolulu. But um so as I said, there's four components, uh there is the series of five workshops that are held at the high school. Uh every single one of our classes are led by 100% female financial professionals. Um and so they come in from the local firms and go into the high schools. The second component is a Wall Street experienced field trip with the girls, get to come to the industry um or to the firm's offices to see women in authority. Um That whole day, that's all they will see is Women in Authority in finance. Um And the third component of the program is our happens in the spring. And that is our mentorship program where we get a little more particular with interviewing skills and building resumes and we create social capital with the girls and our volunteers. Um and so forth. And then the fourth, the fourth program I should say Is one we've just recently launched in August of last year, which is our um professional, excuse me, our vocational and career platform. And that particular platform has been wildly successful. I'm happy to report. We have over 70 investment firm partners who are listing Both internships and entry level positions. There's over 300 that were listed with us in that time period. And so we are actually expanding that capability this coming year to have more of our students be able to apply for these positions, these internships um, and jobs that here to four would only be offered to pretty elite schools and uh, the vast majority of our schools are public schools. And so it's, it's absolutely broadening both gender and racial equity in the profession. Yet you mentioned this expansion. It's all very exciting. Why was Jpmorgan Chase the partner that you wanted to have in this venture? Um, obviously they're an industry leader. I do think that they are making some inroads into both gender and racial diversity. And so we wanted to be with a partner that would be obviously a leader in the field in these endeavors. We, we are aware of women in the movie women on the move. And so we wanted to align with them, Which we have. We've grown from one school that they're sponsoring to five schools in five different cities across the United States. And we hope that that relationship will continue to grow as they are expressing interest now, also in Mexico City in Mexico. Um and by the way, we have interest in over 100 cities in addition to the 35 cities that we are in, including that's just in the United States. And then we have interest, as I mentioned in Mexico City and Singapore, Sydney, uh and elsewhere. So, um um and we've been thrilled with the partnership with Jpmorgan. They've been absolutely wonderful um in working with us across the five cities, Just about like 15 seconds left any future plans you can share with rock the street, Wall Street? Well, the expansion over to London, we are first international location was Vancouver Canada will have to say we'll be back there, but this, this month we'll be launching in London and stay tuned because we'll be probably launching elsewhere in europe. And um, the vocation and career platform is really an exciting um uh, new addition for us and we're very excited for our students and for our corporate partners who are obviously advertising very substantial number of internships and jobs on that portal. So we're really excited to see that grow too. Maura Cunningham, founder and Ceo of Rock the Street Wall Street. So good to have you on the show