When Aaliyah Duah was 17, she realized one of the major differences between an underserved community like Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant, where she grew up, and more affluent ones was early access to information on how to manage money.
In her public schools, she never learned about financial literacy — and had not heard the term — until she started going down a “rabbit hole” to educate herself on investing. She began to believe: To address the wealth gap in a systemic way, she needed to address the information gap. While a sophomore at Virginia State University during the pandemic, she started Financial Revolutionn, creating workshops that teach personal finance to young people in straightforward, relatable, and fun ways.
Now 23, Duah continues to grow her organization, reaching students at more than 30 schools across Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. She uses examples like Roblox, sneakers, bacon-egg-and-cheeses, and Apple iPhones to teach about credit cards, interest, and retirement accounts. She’s soon releasing a coloring and activity book called My Financial ABC’s, designed to help kids ages 3–8 learn basic financial terms.
(The extra “n” in Revolutionn stands for “network,” because as Duah said, “I learned early on that building wealth requires knowing the right people and making sure the right people know you.”)
On Tuesday, Duah is being recognized for her efforts as a changemaker. She was named one of five winners of the David Prize, which is essentially New York City’s version of the MacArthur “genius” grants. Launched in 2020 by the Walentas Family Foundation, the prize awards $200,000, no-strings attached, to visionaries working to make a difference in the five boroughs.
Duah’s push comes as school districts across the country are embracing financial literacy. Starting this year, New York state is mandating students in grades 5-12 learn about budgeting and money management. Next year, students in grades K-4 must also learn personal finance.
“Everything in our communities teaches us to spend our money poorly and to chase after quick success/financial gains meanwhile wealth builds over time,” Duah said. “I realized that I couldn’t just share this information with my closest friends, I needed to share this message with the world.”
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Tell us more about your own experience with school and/or financial literacy and how that affects your work today.
Growing up and even to this day I’ve watched many of my loved ones and peers make poor financial decisions due to a lack of financial education taught to them at a young age. This showed me the importance of learning early so that you don’t grow up developing poor financial habits.
As I learned more about financial literacy, there were accounts and information that I had access to that changed my life. This made me understand that the gap is truly in the access to information. After investing my money and seeing my account grow or building my credit and using it to buy my own car and apartment in my 20s without a cosigner or getting ripped off just because I knew how to manage my money at 17 shows how making smart financial decisions pay off. This drives me to continue to educate myself so I can provide the information to my family and the world.
The David Prize is all about the “power of people with the conviction to change the future of our city.”
Tell us a bit about your vision for what’s possible with financial literacy in NYC and how it can help break the cycle of generational poverty.
Financial literacy can change the entire NYC landscape. I truly believe this because that is why some people fight so hard to keep it out of schools, because they know when you put financial education in the hands of all people it will level the playing field. If we provide financial education to people at a young age, they grow up avoiding years worth of making poor financial decisions, they can open accounts at a young age that gives them money to have options when they are older.
Additionally, when they become parents they know how to manage their money so they aren’t passing down financial trauma to their children and helping them establish smart financial habits at a young age.
Financial education helps build better communities and solve systemic issues. When we think of a community, a community is made up of individuals, so if each individual becomes financially savvy the whole neighborhood becomes wealthy. That changes the quality of life for all people who live there. That changes family dynamics, closes the wealth gap, fixes crime, and all the very systems that are hurting families.
What does your work look like with schools?
Every school gets the same Financial Revolutionn experience, but the way they receive it depends on the needs of the school. Some schools’ budgets allow for a six-session program while others can be a semester long. All programs end in a culminating activity which can vary from a stock analysis competition, business pitch competition, or students designing their financial future. The purpose of the program is for the students to come in with any understanding of finances and leave with a transformational experience.
What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?
My favorite lesson to teach is types of accounts and stock investing. Types of accounts is fun because I watch the students go through this aha moment where they are learning about new accounts they didn’t even know existed. For example teaching them about a 401K, which is a term they probably hear often but nobody has ever taken the time to educate them on what that is. I remember teaching a group of college students the difference between a high yield savings account and a regular savings account, and one of them asked me: If this is free and grows your money at a higher rate, how come everyone doesn’t have this account? I had to tell them the truth: It’s simply because people just don’t know these exist.
The stock investing class is always cool because I see students’ mindsets shift from thinking like a consumer to an investor/owning. They start to understand the power of compound interest and investing at a young age gives them more time for their assets to grow.
Many students have told us they think schools should be teaching financial literacy. What sort of feedback have you gotten from students?
I have students say my classes were the best classes they’ve ever had or they only come to school to come to my class, which is sad but the truth.
This is a big moment for financial literacy. New York is now requiring public schools to begin providing personal finance instruction. What are your thoughts on the requirement?
I love that the DOE is starting to be more serious about the financial literacy conversation and really implementing it into more schools. I just hope that they are intentional about how they implement it into the school system.
Financial literacy is very important and if it isn’t received well in the classroom, it would almost become like an English class where students need to know how to read and write but because they made the topic so boring, students don’t take it seriously.
What do you plan to do with the prize money?
I plan to utilize the prize money to invest into an online program that helps families learn about personal finances in an engaging and interactive way.
I also plan to use it to invest in a team to help expand my program into more schools so that we can impact thousands of families all over NYC.
Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.
