Financial education in the Black community is often a concept that’s not grasped until adulthood. Even then, many young adults struggle to manage their personal finances because they’ve never received a solid foundation in saving and investing. When former Nickelodeon executive and Goalsetter founder Tanya Van Court set out to create her financial literacy platform, she understood that she had a higher calling to close the wealth gap between Black and brown families in America and educate Black youth all across the country. The idea for her revolutionary platform came from her then eight-year-old daughter who asked for enough money to start an investment account for her ninth birthday. Van Court knew that if she could combine her knack for understanding the language of kids as well as her personal connection to financial education, she could create something powerful to better equip Black America’s youth to take charge of their finances. “I didn’t want to be an entrepreneur. It’s...

This founder is building a legacy one payroll system at a time. Craig J. Lewis is the founder and CEO of the FinTech platform changing the way businesses pay people. On a mission to simplify the payroll system while building a legacy to ensure that people remember his last name, Lewis knows what it means to be resilient when the odds are stacked against him. Gig Wage was built to help ease pain points for the payroll system that neglects the 1099 employee, or what Lewis calls the “gig” worker, made up of freelancers, contractors, etc. To date, Lewis has managed to raise $13.2 million and is on a path to quadrupling the size of his company by the end of 2021. He sat down with AfroTech to discuss what representation means to him in the venture capital space, where he feels the industry gets it wrong and how they can correct that, and the solution that Gig Wage provides that isn’t found on the market.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Gig Wage (@gigwage) AfroTech: What...