Stock Market Review

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 Vocational 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.

Maura Cunningham Founder & CEO - Rock The Street, Wall Street

ARTICLE

Women Suffer from ‘math anxiety’ more then men do - here’s how to reverse it

By Alessandra Malito, MarketWatch (October 24, 2019)

This teacher-turned-financial adviser on the different ways men and women approach math and life

Many Americans suffer from “math anxiety,” which inhibits their ability to solve problems — a potential issue when it’s time to balance a checkbook or save for retirement.

Math anxiety may start in the classroom during childhood but it has a way of following students throughout their lives, said Maddie Parker, a financial adviser at Parker Financial Group in Overland Park, Kan., who started her career as a high school math teacher before switching to financial planning. She has seen people postpone their financial plans and refrain from saving for retirement because they don’t want to deal with the possibly complicated equations and complex investing topics.

A fear of math can be debilitating — and not just because it could result in poor math grades. Many students, especially girls, may avoid careers that include a heavy amount of math, especially those in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields.

Girls made up just 30% of the top 5,000 ninth-graders in the American Mathematics Competitions, according to research distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2017. Just 18% of the top 500 ninth-graders were girls, and only 8% of the top 50. That gender gap worsens as they age — by senior year, only 22% of the top 5,000 are girls (compared with the 30% in ninth grade), followed by just 12% of the top 500.

Parker, 30, taught Algebra II and geometry to high-school students before switching to financial planning and working with her 76-year-old father, who has his own firm. She also became a Certified Financial Planner. “I have a math background and the CFP puts me in a good position to do financial planning in a way that educates people about the planning and why,” she said. Their age difference also helps them work with clients of all ages and provide their own perspectives, she added.

Parker spoke with MarketWatch about her education background, why people are so worried about math and how to mesh the two:

MarketWatch: How exactly would you describe math anxiety?