STOCK REVIEW

OUR GOALS

• Close the gender gap in wages, investments and wealth accumulation for all women, particularly among women of color.

• Increase financial and investment literacy of girls at a young age so that they are aware of the financial responsibilities AND opportunities of post-secondary life, university life, at work, at home and in their communities.

• Teach girls on how being financially independent is key to living a self-determined life.

• Open girls’ minds to math-focused fields of study as compatible with a career that has a positive impact on the world.

• Spark girls’ enthusiasm for finance at a critical age and make them aware of the societal benefits personal financial knowledge and mathoriented careers can have.

• Create the social capital between students and female financial professionals that will enable students to get a jumpstart on their personal money management behavior and on their university and work lives. • Increase the number of women studying finance, economics or related computational business fields.

• Create an early pipeline of female talent so as to increase the number of women who enter into the financial services industry.

• Provide a pathway to better lifetime money management, academic performance and university preparation.

• Coach students on resume building.

• Provide career discovery by offering job shadowing and/or industry summer internships

• Foster students’ continued growth in finance through their university years and into the workforce.

• Create a longitudinal cohort of girls who can network with each other across cities, socioeconomic lines, universities and industries.

• Provide an internship and job portal that shares finance-related opportunities.

AN OPEN LETTER TO VOLUNTEERS

Paying it forward.

YOU are creating societal and industrial change.

Thanks to you, Rock The Street, Wall Street is assimilating more and more girls to their future financial selves. Many are joining us, too, on a second journey - that of a career in finance. The records show we are successful in bringing out an “Investor Identity” in the girls we meet.

This fall, we anticipate enrolling well over 1,200 girls in 60+ high schools across 35 cities in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. These students will be provided with the knowledge of how to budget and save, and equally as important, the tools to invest. This exposure as well as portfolio and market tracking is leading to a burgeoning familiarity with the financial markets which will lead to their greater participation in the capital markets as they age.

“To have a stable economic future, people need not only income but also the means to build wealth such as savings, retirement funds, and assets (e.g., a home) to serve as an economic cushion during hard times. All these factors shape health; families who have trouble making ends meet are forced to forego medical care, prescription medicines, and other costly resources needed for their health.”

- Woolf, S., Chapman, D., Hill, L., Schoomaker, H., Wheeler, D., Snellings, L., Hyung Lee, J. (2018, Oct). Uneven Opportunities: How conditions for wellness vary across the metropolitan Washington region. VCU Center on Society and Health

Changing individuals one at a time is not enough. I knew this ten years ago, when I launched RTSWS. We are successfully bringing together the private and public sectors. To truly mitigate gender and racial discrimination in the capital markets and in the workplace, solutions need to address industrial and cultural stereotypes and practices. Girls need to see, relate and interact with role models in the M of STEM and the industry needs to dip down to the high school level to get BIPOC and low income populations to apply for jobs at their firms.

Creation of easier points of entry into higher paying careers and less barriers for advancement are needed. Rock The Street, Wall Street is providing course work, testing, mentoring, job preparedness, and the social capital and connections into an industry which heretofore was typically recruiting at only elite schools. For the first time, a consistently diverse population of girls both racially and socioeconomically, are being coached and interviewed for high paying STEM internships and careers in the M of STEM.

High school is where students are on the cusp of whether or not to go to college, which college, and which studies they should pursue. If we wait until they get to college, we have waited too long as the research shows females represent only one in ten students in college math, finance, economics classes and that number hasn’t changed in over 50 years. Intervention in this existing pattern is key. You are intervening. And guess what? The intervention is having an impact. Our students, on average, have shown a 78% increase in their financial and investment literacy. And our alumnae are pursuing finance, economics and related computational business degrees at 5 times the rate of an average female attending college.

RTSWS Vocation and Career Platform/RTSWS Internship and Job Portal

We were blown away by the interest the industry has in getting the next generation of diverse female financiers into their ranks as is evidenced by the number of firms that are posting their internship and entry level job positions on our recently launched, (August 2021) RTSWS Internship and Job Portal. Seventy plus world class firms are registered with us and they have posted, to date, close to 300 opportunities. And that directory keeps growing as we hear from an expanding list of firms who want to post their opportunities. Rock The Street, Wall Street is becoming the “go-to” portal for finding emerging, diverse female talent. (If your firm wants to learn more about how to get their listings published on our site, please contact sarah.s@rockthestreetwallstreet.com.)

We are also expanding our alumnae department this year as our students have aged up into college and beyond. We are launching this Fall, the RTSWS Vocational and Career Platform. This will assist students in honing their job searches,, identifying and working toward career goals, finding suitable internship and job openings, securing referrals and connections to employers and boosting networking skills. We are thrilled to organically grow into this next stage of development in our mission.

Hello London!

School year 2021 - 2022 saw our very first international location - Vancouver, Canada. This year, we are thrilled to announce that we will be launching our first European chapter in London, England. With interest in launching our program coming in from over 100 US cities and international locations such as Mexico City, Singapore and Sydney, we are just getting started in the overseas markets. We can’t wait to meet our London volunteers, students and teachers!

10th Anniversary

It’s been heady. I launched RTSWS 10 years ago at three schools in Nashville, Tennessee after completing my masters thesis on how we lose girls in Math at age nine in the U.S. Convinced that all we had to do was lift the veil on how financial math is, for the most part, nothing more than 6th grade math and how versatile and rewarding a career in finance can be, we could reset the image teenage girls have of the financial services industry and have them join us at our workplace.

We are changing who we invest in to change what we invest in. And guess what… It’s happening as is evidenced by the outcomes and growth noted above. I couldn’t be more thankful for the growing army of volunteers around the globe who want to change their workplaces and their communities. With your continued involvement, we can accomplish even more.

Your version of shine is a search light. Thanks for spreading so much good by helping to create gender and racial equity in the capital markets and in your workplace.