Nasdaq Purpose Forum: Ask Me Anything

*Transcript has been edited for clarity

Jailan Griffiths: For our next panel, I'd like to welcome Judy Herbst, executive director of Savvy Ladies and Ramona Ortega, founder and CEO of My Money My Future, to join me on stage for an “Ask Me Anything” session. Now, I've already seen from prior panels that this crowd is not shy. So, keep the questions coming. But to kick it off, I will ask Ramona and Judy a couple of questions to answer anything you wanted to know about finance and investing. And then we'll open it up to the audience for the remainder of the time. And if you do get shy, I have a couple of other questions, it's going to be okay, but I can't foresee that happening. All right. So, let's kick things off. Judy let's start with you. How did Savvy Ladies get started and how does Savvy Ladies really help its customers along the investing journey?  

Judy Herbst: So, Savvy Ladies, if I can share what Savvy Ladies does with everyone.  

JG: Please do. That's my fault, I should've had you explain that. 

JH: So, Savvy Ladies is a nonprofit organization started 20 years ago by Stacy Francis. She is our founder. She is a wealth manager. And her story is a very special story. This is her love letter to her grandmother.  

She saw in her early twenties, when Stacy was just out of college, that her grandmother was suffering from financial abuse. And that was because of domestic violence. And she learned about that in the hospital. And she vowed to herself that no woman should suffer from being trapped in a relationship. And she wanted to, as she was building her own business, start a foundation, start a nonprofit where all women could safely have a space to ask a financial question. That's what Stacy founded 20 years ago as she was starting her own wealth management company here in New York, Francis Financial. Some of you might know her. She is the real thing. She is wonderful. I've had the opportunity to join her on her journey just in 2021 this year to really take the organization as the nonprofit further and build the awareness, connect more women with financial professionals to answer their financial questions.  

So, what is Savvy Ladies? Jillian, Savvy Ladies is a nonprofit that is a free financial help line at its soul, that is the center. I like to say, “All roads lead to the free financial help line.” It's a marketplace, where women who have a question, they're finding us through digital questions, questioning on Google Online, through media, through partnerships and referrals with like-minded organizations. They get connected with a pro bono financial specialist that could be a CDF, a CFP, or a tax professional. And when I started two years ago, the organization was connecting about 8-10 women a month very manually. And I said to Stacy, this is the heart and soul of Savvy Ladies. We need to tell more people about the wonderful work, and we need to have more volunteers. We had about 35 volunteers when I started.  

So, over the last two years, COVID was a blessing to us because everyone was online, everyone was home, and everyone had questions. They were searching. I was able to grow and thank you for an amazing grant from Nasdaq Foundation. We added technology to Savvy Ladies, and we have an app now where we have an algorithm matching by expertise. Last year, in 2022, we connected right under 2500 women, and we had 187 volunteers on the platform.  

Today, we are on a pace to connect over 3000 women by the end of this year. And I have a community now of pro bono volunteers from across the country that are just shy of 300, 287 volunteers. So, these women are asking questions about investing as one of the key categories that we see is a trending topic across the ages, but especially the younger generation.  

JG: That's amazing. And it's most interesting that you say the younger generations find you to ask the questions proactively, to start their investing journey. Ramona, what are the three most important steps to starting any financial literacy journey.  

Ramona Ortega: Great. Thank you so much, I’m so happy to be here. I want to start off first by kind of putting this into context, right, and why we do the work that we do and also the work at Wealth Build AI. $68 trillion of wealth is about to be transferred in the great wealth transfer. Much of that is going to be in the hands of new investors, black and brown communities. This is our opportunity to close the racial wealth gap and build generational wealth. Who will they turn to for financial advice? We need to start meeting people where they are, and this is the opportunity that we really have positioned right now to do well and do good. And I think that's what we're doing here with Nasdaq, through the THRIVE initiative that was funded last year and this year will be continuing amidst the work that we're doing with Wealth Build.AI.  

So, three things that I learned on Wall Street. I was a securities litigator and I worked on some of the top cases. Many of you probably heard of the Madoff's, we litigated that. And so, I got an inside look from the belly of the beast, if you will, understanding how you build wealth, not only the products, but the mindsets, the different kinds of utilities you use, the different sorts of mechanisms. And so, one of the things that we're doing is really meeting people in the community where they are. So, one of the one of the ways that we're doing that is really changing how we talk about this. This is not just about financial literacy. When you're rich, you get a wealth advisor. When you are poor, you get financial literacy. Let's change that. It's not about saving. We know how to save. Plus, white men don't save, they invest, right? You should have multiple types of accounts. And one of the things that we're seeing across the board is that especially in people like the folks that are in this room. People are saying, I've maxed out my 401k, what else do I do? How do I start investing? What are the vehicles in which I invest? I'm buying other properties. What should I do with them? Put them in an LLC. How do we protect that? Put them in a trust. How do we build that generational wealth? So, I think one of the things that's important is that not only do we understand the lingo, but that's also the easy part, right? Understanding the sort of financial jargon. Break that down. Let's just cut through the bullshit, get to what it is, here's the product. Here's why this product is important and here's what you need in your portfolio.  

And then we also need to be clear, we need to clarify that building wealth is a journey. It's not just having an investment account. I was in Neobanking very early on, and everyone's like, “Oh, give people a bank account.” It's like, “if you have a bank account and there's no money in it. Who cares?” I've worked with people that have put money into their 401k and never distributed it. So, it was literally sitting in a money market account. So, there's so many pieces of the building wealth journey, understanding the products, understanding the lingo, and then understanding where you're going.  

Money is just a means to an end. What's your end goal? Right? And I think many people are talking about the personality of money. But really, what is it that you want to do? I want to leave property for my family. I want to leave an endowment. I want to build an empire. What is it that you want to do? And then let's work backwards and look at all of those products. That's the kind of work that we're doing, and we're meeting people where they are.  

We're excited this year to be doing a series of legacy dinners across the country, so we're bringing in families and learning how to talk about wealth together with financial advisors. So, we really understand the product pool that you need to get where you're going. And I think that's the kind of thing that really helped me in my journey, understanding all of those pieces and then understanding them at a high level, right? So, really getting to financial mobility.  

JG: That’s amazing. I'm going to hand it over to the audience in a minute. But first, how are the organizations that you work with helping to build confidence amongst the next generation of investors?  

JH: Our organization is really helping the underserved communities we're working with. As I was saying, different organizations such as “Dress for Success,” they're working and they're building their wealth and having a salary. What should they do with the money when it goes into the 401k? Not to let it sit there. And how much could they invest and where else could they put their money? Do they do IRA, Roth IRAs and explain those terms to them? Because there is a difference between learning the curriculum self-paced, through an online course and reading a book compared to the one on one. And what makes Savvy Ladies so unique as an organization, is offering that 1 to 1 mentorship.  

And what we've been doing is building confidence and we're seeing that impact now. So, one of the best things, as you know, as a business, we have the KPIs of the organization. What is the impact? I'm always asked. So, a funder wants to see the impact and we can track the numbers of the questions we're asking each client as they come in. Are you building financial confidence? What was your financial anxiety when you came in? And 55% of people coming to Savvy Ladies are so anxious, they are unsure, they have no idea where to turn. And they found Savvy Ladies. 35% of them have some idea what to do, but they need that next sort of boost of confidence of someone to say, “Do this next”. When we asked them on the outtake, after they've met up with their professional, their advisor, how do you feel now about your confidence? 80% of them have moved the needle, their confidence has increased.  

And then we're asking them another question Are you putting a plan in place? So, you got you were told what to do, you were given some advice, and 70% of them are putting an action plan in place. I think that is fantastic. And then we're asking them, would you like a follow-up financial check-in? 90% of them want a follow up nudge in 30 days to see how they're doing. And that's what Savvy Ladies is offering and that's what the organization is doing. And we're seeing those questions around entrepreneurship, small business growth for women. Black and African American brown women are skewing higher on small business questions, on money and health questions, skewing larger for Hispanic, brown and black women, as well as family finances.  

And again, it is listening to your community, understanding the language. We have to do that as well as the owners of the business, understanding the language. At Savvy Ladies, we say transitions. Divorce is a transition. Being widowed is a transition. But by speaking the language, working with different diverse communities, family finances was a term we hadn't used until this year. And those terms are skewing because we're speaking the language. Single moms want to protect their families. It's family finances. So, if I can create those answers for them in our digital world from SEO and content, then they feel safe coming to Savvy Ladies. And I can match them with experts in that field. And that's what we're doing.  

JG: We've got a few minutes left. I have another couple questions, but I want to open it up to the audience. Any questions here for our panelists?  

Audience Member 1: So, I'm just curious. I knew Stacey when she was just getting started. Obviously, we’ve known each other for a long time. Can you talk about I think there's a distinction when we talk about products, process and confidence. So, can you talk about the process and confidence? Because it takes money to make money. So where are you telling me to draw from and where do you get that confidence?  

JH: So, we are helping them on that financial journey. So, it is really very specific to each individual client when they come in, because every woman is coming into Savvy Ladies at a different place on their financial journey. We will do programs and we have been doing panel discussions which have been very well received around health and money. Those big topics we're seeing, health and money around divorce. So, we'll do those, and we'll take a path of how to own your money going through divorce, that forensic accounting almost to be able to be financially independent. So, we'll look at it by subject line, by the clients that are coming in. So, I've organized it by 12 different categories that we are looking at and we will come up with a path that way. But to answer your question, for each of the women, it becomes very important to visualize as they're working with their financial professional that are setting up a plan for them. And then what we're doing now is inviting them to come back 30, 60, 90 days in the process to see how they are. And they are not going because of the breadth of the volunteers we have from across the US with various expertise. Someone might come up with one question, but their next question might be around retirement savings. And so, we'll match them with another expert on that path, so they get the expert for them for that question also based on the availability of the volunteers. So that is one of the reasons we've been able to skew and grow the volunteer community because we've made the platform accessible to the host of volunteers who come to us, they can look at it at their convenience 24/7, and identify a client they want to help. They can open up all cases, they can do it by category. And we've been able to really service more and more women in a faster amount of time matching them, because the volunteers, these professionals want to give back, and this makes it very easy for them from a virtual perspective to give back.  

RO: If I can follow up on that, because I think this is such an important thing and you're going to see these things across all fintech and world tech right now, right? So, my new company, Wealth Buiild.AI, we're leveraging the power of AI to build a financial advisor in your pocket. And the idea of that is to take the sort of friction and shame because we don't talk about this enough, especially around communities of color. There's a lot of shame in not knowing. There's a lot of shame in not being where you need to be. There's a lot of shame about mistakes, right? So, we take that out by using sort of AI to build this chat bot. It's front and center that's smart. That can give you the answers that you need before you even get into the room with the financial advisor. Because the thing is with financial advice, and that's how I started my first company, was that at the end of the day, I don't want to be in front of a financial advisor that knows nothing about me or my community, right? Because, especially in communities of color, and I think Sallie talked about service with women, is that it's so nuanced. We generally make financial decisions as a community. We're thinking outside of our home, right? And so, you really want to understand those nuanced financial behaviors so that you can best match with the best product. And so, I think that's what we're seeing across the board, is that how do we get the best financial information to them where they're at? Right? We're using embeddable API to make sure that we're going to be embedded in Venmo, we're going to be embedded in PayPal, we're going to be embedded in CDF and community banks. But the idea is that being able to have that first conversation and to get that information immediately with a chat bot is going to be one way in which we're going to be the front door to financial products. Right. And then you couple that with the kind of community engagement, authentic community engagement that we're doing through Thrive, that what you're doing with the other partners in this room, then you have that match and then you start really moving the needle.  

Audience Member 2: Hi, my name is John Moore, and I work with John's Leadership Alliance. So, we work with young black men and women, high school college, young professionals. And what I what I've seen is that when we try to work with financial advisors for our younger students like high school and college students, they really shy away from that. And I'm wondering, you guys have talked about that one on one and how you were able to do that. Do you guys have any thoughts about where we should be leaning on in terms of getting that done for our younger students, so that way they're not in the problems before they get to their children.  

RO: AI is one of them. I mean, this ability to talk to a chat bot that's engaged with them, it's inside of a metaverse, it’s inside of these places where they're at. I think that's going to be really, really important as we move forward. The other thing is that engagement needs to look different. I mean, we did the money makeovers this year. We're doing legacy dinners. We're talking about events. You've got to meet people where they're already engaged inside of their communities. When we talk about money, it should be fun, right? It should be exciting. It should be sexy. So, I think that's where you work with the partners on the ground, the community agency, the community organizations, the universities, all of that. That's where you meet people where they are in a really authentic way.  

JH: And what Savvy Ladies has begun to do is, as our community of volunteers has grown is: We're training the trainers. So, we're doing peer to peer training with the volunteers around the heavy role of finance. We know there's cultural finance needs. We need trust. Women like to see their own selves and their advisors. And initially, you know, we were skewed men who are the advisors who wanted to volunteer. So, it's finding more female advisors, it's finding more diverse female advisors, and that's growing now because we're building that awareness, but we're also training the trainers. We're having groups that are the male groups. Men can be great. They can be our allies. They can help. They can be empathetic. They've had stories of their own, be they saw it with their mothers or their sisters, and they want to help. So, we have been exactly that. That is, I've pulled a team of volunteers who are a diverse group of volunteers so they can train the other volunteers. And this is how we continue to grow.  

Audience Member 3: So, this year at Cannes International, Lyon in media and marketing, the overwhelming theme was authenticity in your message and the need for authenticity and branding in the markets you're trying to sell to. So how has the Thrive campaign, your companies, your organizations figured out how they're going to partner with professional organizations, companies, ERG groups to be able to help them to change their education, their approach, their branding to the markets that they're delivering their messages to, to be more authentic.  

JH: I can take that initially to start with, is we recognize that. Savvy Ladies was founded by Stacy Francis, a white female. I come in the board as an executive director, another white female. How do we change the voices and faces of Savvy Ladies so the communities, diverse communities, feel safe and comfortable that the services are available to all women? To be authentic, you need to be thoughtful. You need to be mindful, and you need to be real. And we need to build trust. And I think that is what we have set out as a board to do at Savvy Ladies is to build trust across new communities for us. And with that, it's expanding our board. So, we have been doing that, over the last 18 months Savvy Ladies has extended the board. We've extended to a younger generation as well, launching a junior board of 25-to-35-year-old people, men and women, men and women of diverse backgrounds. So, the voices of Savvy Ladies can go beyond our founder. And we love Stacey, and she will always be the authentic, real voice of Savvy Ladies. But there are so many other women, and that's where Savvy Ladies is going. So, to be real and to reach out to those other communities, to those partners, we need to speak the language and speak with the multiple voices of everyone who wants to help women build financial empowerment.  

RO: Just really quick, I would say that the messenger matters, right? And so any of the financial institutions in the room, the messenger matter. So, who you bring on as your partners, as ambassadors, as partnerships, really thinking about how that really trickles down to the communities that you're actually trying to reach. Because I think that's where, we don't want to just put pink on things, right? You don't want to just speak Spanish. The Latino community is super diverse, right? Are you talking to Latinos in Miami, in California, very diverse. So, I think that we have to be very specific. We have to be nuanced in our approaches, and we have to think about our partnerships. And I think that that's what Nasdaq does very well, which is there's lots of Fintechs. There's not enough Fintechs in this space, as black and brown Fintechs are very few and far between. We need more of them, which is why I need more venture capital giving to fintech, because this is the one of the largest market opportunities there is in tech. And I think by doing that you're going to start to trickle down and get those sorts of more diverse communities involved. And across the board, whether it's life insurance, investing, investing in the market, investing in real estate.  

JG: I know there were a couple other questions there, but we really are out of time. But, you know, Ramona and Judy are going to be here for the rest of the afternoon. So please do find them during the networking session and ask those questions. Ramona, Judy, thank you so much. It's great having you here.