Girls ‘Rock The Street’
November 5, 2016 by CFP Board
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The CFP Board Center for Financial Planning and Rock the Street, Wall Street are partnering to narrow the gender gap in financial planning with programs for girls in high school, introducing them to careers in financial planning by teaching lifelong financial skills.
Rock the Street, Wall Street (RTSWS) is a non-profit organization dedicated to equipping girls to succeed financially and inspiring them to pursue careers in finance. The CFP Board Center for Financial Planning is working to increase the number of women CFP® professionals by, in part, raising awareness of financial planning as a career.
The new partnership will feature CFP Board’s Women’s Initiative (WIN) Advocates – Certified Financial Planner™ professionals designated by CFP Board to spread the word that financial planning can be a rewarding career for women – to participate as mentors or instructors during five-week literacy-to-career programs for high school girls.
“Financial planning can be a creative and dynamic career for women – but there’s an awareness problem. Girls cannot be what they cannot see,” said Marilyn Mohrman-Gillis, Executive Director of the CFP Board Center for Financial Planning. “Rock the Street, Wall Street will help us place CFP® professionals in the classroom so that young women will not only gain insight into what financial planners do, but acquire valuable financial skills in the process.”
The first program as part of this collaboration began October 18 at William Cullen Bryant High School in Long Island City, NY. Hour-long sessions are being presented to students once a week for five weeks. The sessions will be capped off with a Wall Street Experience field trip. The RTSWS students will go into Manhattan to visit female financial pros at their offices and on the floors of trading rooms.
Making A Difference
“The numbers show we are making a difference,” said Maura Cunningham, founder and executive director of Rock The Street, Wall Street. “Girls who have participated in our workshops have had an 84 percent increase in their comprehension of financial concepts. They are changing their college searches and major/minor declarations to include finance, accounting and business where before they hadn’t even considered these fields. Through our programming, girls can have a better chance at improving their lives, their households, their communities and the financial services industry.”
In 2014 WIN published a white paper that presents findings of a comprehensive research study on the causes of the “feminine famine” in financial planning. It offers recommendations to increase the number of women CFP® professionals – which has remained flat at 23 percent for over a decade. Recruiting CFP® professionals to promote to girls groups the basic skills of financial planning and to raise awareness of financial planning as a great career for women was among the recommendations.
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ABOUT CFP BOARD
The mission of Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. is to benefit the public by granting the CFP® certification and upholding it as the recognized standard of excellence for competent and ethical personal financial planning. The Board of Directors, in furthering CFP Board’s mission, acts on behalf of the public, CFP® professionals and other stakeholders. CFP Board owns the certification marks CFP®, Certified Financial Planner™, CFP® (with plaque design) and CFP® (with flame design) in the U.S., which it awards to individuals who successfully complete CFP Board’s initial and ongoing certification requirements. CFP Board currently authorizes more than 75,000 individuals to use these marks in the U.S.
ABOUT the CFP BOARD CENTER FOR FINANCIAL PLANNING
The CFP Board Center for Financial Planning seeks to create a more diverse and sustainable financial planning profession so that every American has access to competent and ethical financial planning advice. The Center brings together CFP® professionals, firms, educators, researchers and experts to address profession-wide challenges in the areas of diversity and workforce development, and to build an academic home that offers opportunities for conducting and publishing new research that adds to the financial planning body of knowledge.
ABOUT ROCK THE STREET, WALL STREET
Rock The Street, Wall Street programs inspire, educate, and equip girls with the skills to succeed financially throughout their lives and potentially pursue a career in finance. Girls learn about the capital markets and their role in the maintaining the welfare of the economy, while simultaneously helping them see the real-world application of the math content they learn in the classroom. Headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., RTSWS has offered programs in schools and community centers in five cities across the U.S.: Chicago, Memphis, Nashville, New York City, and Dallas/Ft. Worth, with plans to continue to expand. RTSWS achieved 501(c)(3) status in June 2013.
