Tiffany James is ensuring financial literacy will be accessible to Black women.
As AfroTech previously told you, the 27-year-old is the founder of Modern Blk Girl (MBG). The digital platform was created to ensure minority women have a safe space to be themselves and learn about the stock market. For James creating MBG stemmed from her Caribbean upbringing in which financial literacy was nonexistent. It was not until the age of 21 that James became more conscious of how stocks could transform her ways of living. In fact, after investing in various stocks including Tesla she turned $10,000 into two million within three years.
“If I had the knowledge I have now about financial literacy when I was younger, a lot of things could have been different for me. One experience that I went through is not having money for simple things like high school prom, senior trip, and a cap and gown but if I knew I could invest in Apple my junior or senior year I would have been fine,” James told AfroTech. “My experience made me want to put more information out there to make it easier for younger kids to understand financial literacy.”
Now James is helping other women to create their own success stories through MBG. The platform first launched on Clubhouse in 2020 with 500 users but that number has since climbed to over 200,000. Here women of color become educated on steps to create generational wealth by learning the fundamentals of the stock market. MBG has already helped women of color over 3.5 million dollars in the stock market, according to information provided to AfroTech.
MBG To Launch Campaign Financially Empowering Thousands More
More recently, the digital platform has welcomed the return of Teen University. The four-week accelerator program teaches young women how to maneuver in the market. The majority of courses are free of cost and teens are taught financial planning, long-term investing, and trading. To coincide with the educational programming, students receive a $500 cash wallet to jumpstart their investment and trade journey, according to information provided to AfroTech. What’s more, Teen University cohorts will have a chance to earn a $10,000 grant at the end of the year.
The program has already created a hopeful future for many young girls. James tells AfroTech, one sophomore college student has financially supported herself through college thanks to her newfound knowledge in the trading and investment arena. Another former student, and current brand ambassador of MBG turned a $3,000 portfolio to $12,000 within months during her freshman year of college.
As the digital platform looks ahead, it will launch its “Work Harder not Smarter” campaign to encourage 10,000 women to register for financial literacy courses. The campaign honors a larger commitment of MBG’s mission to position 500,000 women of color on the market to change the industry narrative.
“Statistics say that entrepreneurs are working harder. There are so many articles about Black women starting off careers and doing well, but when you talk about building wealth in the United States in the last 20 years, the majority of it has been through stocks and investing. This is why we are committing to sign up at least 10,000 women for financial literacy class in early May and it will be a free intro to stock market class,” James said.
