In 2015, Chloe McKenzie, a former JP Morgan investor, launched Black Fem – an organization “dedicated to breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty”. The racial wealth gap is still steadily widening, according to studies done by Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies.
When asked about why she wanted to start Black Fem, Ms. McKenzie replied that “What inspired me to begin fighting for wealth justice came from recognizing how wealth and privilege saved my life and how few Black women are afforded the same opportunity”. She has also stated that “Black Fem stands for Black feminism, which states that if we liberate those at the bottom, we are really liberating everyone”.
Black Fem plans to do this by using their own WealthRise™ model. This model works with school systems to ensure that there are financial literacy lessons five days a week to help young women of color adopt principles that will help them create and sustain wealth later in life. They aim to do this through Intervention Design, Teacher Academies, Classroom Integration, Behavioral Reinforcement, and Monitoring and Evaluation tactics.
Ms. McKenzie saw that, while she loved her job at JP Morgan post college, there was a major lack of racial representation on the trading floors. She wanted to analyze what the barriers to people of color from getting to where she was were. She wanted to “empower individuals from disenfranchised communities by providing them with financial literacy resources”.
Ms. McKenzie has also written a book called The Activist Investor which describes how Ms. McKenzie aims to close the wealth gap, and build wealth through investing.
Sources: Newsone.com 1/27/20; Forbes.com 6/28/19; blackfem.org 1/28/20
