Financial planner and founder Zainab Williams is helping women rebuild their wealth.
During the October 2026 NRTH Festival in Toronto, Williams shared that “Mago ku mwili” means “money on the body” in Swahili slang. Referring to her native country, Democratic Republic of the Congo, she mentioned that her mother would often advise her to own jewelry. It was viewed as a “form of financial independence.”
The lesson that stayed with Williams was that building wealth doesn’t always require relying on traditional financial institutions.
“There is community, there is being able to understand what type of assets you have,” she told AFROTECH™ at NRTH Festival. “…And so for myself, even now, I still love jewelry.”
Williams studied at York University in Toronto and graduated with honors with a degree in business administration. Her career initially started in project management. She was saving her earnings when a family friend from the Congo, who was a financial advisor at a bank and well-versed in the Canadian financial ecosystem, told her about great opportunities in her homeland.
Williams, along with others, invested, and she ended up losing her life savings. When she sought help and advice for rebuilding, financial institutions told her she didn’t have large investments to qualify for a financial plan.
She learned other women in Canada had similar experiences with unethical financial advice and were rejected by financial institutions. This motivated Williams to take personal finance courses to understand how the financial ecosystem works and how to vet advisors. She started as a personal line-of-credit analyst and was promoted to a commercial line-of-credit analyst.
“In the meantime, I was also helping other women understand their finances. I really enjoyed that type of work,” Williams said.
She then became a certified financial planner. However, she noticed a barrier for those needing personal financial advice that she believed she could solve by creating her own platform.
“They don’t have $500,000 to qualify to see an advisor,” she noted.
FundEvolve
In 2024, she launched FundEvolve, which began as a budgeting and debt repayment web app before evolving into a subscription-based financial decision-making platform. Williams realized many women didn’t need another budgeting tool, they needed a broader view of their finances and help deciding what to do next.
Using FundEvolve, users can link their bank, credit, and investment accounts, or manually enter their financial information, to get a complete picture of where they stand. FundEvolve encrypts data in transit and at rest.
“Sometimes it’s not even a spending problem, it’s an income problem. Even with the way I built this spending plan, we have different categories. Are you spending a lot of your money on the basics or the blissful experiences or the intentional, or are you drowning in the void,” Williams said.
“…That in itself was like a light bulb moment for a lot of women who are like, ‘Ooh, maybe I should start really upleveling my skills. Maybe I should start becoming more assertive at work so that people can see that I’m actually valuable.’ It was really interesting to be able to change that narrative around money,” she added.
Beyond awareness of spending, FundEvolve will provide an overview of users’ debt and offer ways to reach their financial goals such as making enough money to be able to stop working and/or retire. The platform also offers investment literacy that women can practice in their community, net worth tracking, as well as financial pictures into the future.
Provided through letters, this view offers a “Current You” letter that reflects what a user’s life will probably look like in the next 12 months if nothing changes, and the “Future You” letter shows a user on the accelerated path. That letter will be a reflection of the work that was done by the user to reach their financial goals, whether that was building up their savings, increasing investments, or reducing their debt-free date.
“[The ‘Future You’ letter shows that] because we did advise you that you can budget to add in an additional $100 towards your debt, you can invest an additional $50,” Williams shared as an example.
You will get a momentum score based on the feature, which reflects how your finances have evolved.
AI-BS Detector
A standout feature is the AI-BS Detector. It can analyze whether video content from financial influencers is accurate or problematic. It provides an Influencer Advice Safety Score ranging from “safe” to “caution” to “high risk.”
“It’s very hard for you to be able to get good financial advice that is unbiased. And for many of our community, we rely on social media … AI has really given people access to information, but what we are building is the decision framework of it. That’s the key in all of this, you being able to understand how money works, because you may not have had access to those types of advice,” Williams said.
Williams’ goal is to build 100,000 plans for 100,000 women. She is also looking to partner with professional organizations for women and small businesses with fewer than 800 employees.
A recent win includes onboarding a paid pilot project with a major credit counseling company, which allows FundEvolve to build financial plans at scale.
Funding
So far, Williams has raised over $50,000 from grants and has self-funded the rest of the platform. She is open to validation from investors aligned with her mission.
