Let’s Democratize Wall Street

Robinhood was built to democratize finance for all. We’re proud of what we’ve done to empower people to participate, and our data shows that our customers are more diverse than customers at incumbent brokerages — but there’s much more to do to open our financial system to everyone. Earlier this month, our Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder, Baiju Bhatt, chatted with Lauren Simmons, a personal finance professional, and Ferriss Mason, our hero customer, to hear how we can.

As a former trader on the New York Stock Exchange, Lauren says, “I want to see a Wall Street that is a representation of me. I want to see a Black Wall Street, and even more than that, I want to see a Wall Street that is a representation of America. If we are in a space where we can democratize that and everyone can have a voice and a seat at the table no matter your background, education, gender or race, then we have done it.”

Ferriss thinks that strong financial education is critical to empowering the new generation of investors — and that “this education needs to be in a place and in a way that is accessible.”

For our part, we’re building investing products for everyday people, so that new investors have the same opportunity to grow their knowledge as people from generations of financial wealth. We also know that feeling like you don’t have enough information to take a seat at the table often keeps people out. That’s why we are taking steps to better integrate investor education into our platform.

Over the next few months, you’ll see us launch Robinhood’s Inaugural Fellows program, where HBCU students will join Robinhood for paid fellowships where they’ll support critical educational programming — look out for applications for next summer’s program coming soon. And as many of our customers return back to school, we’ll build programming in partnership with HBCU campuses to support new investors on their journey to becoming informed, confident participants in the financial markets.

We’ll keep being there for our customers as they take charge of their financial independence, so we can empower the next generation of investors.

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