Rock The Street, Wall Street

1. To provide services to high school girls across the country, increasing our reach by 1-2 cities per academic year.

2. To see an average gain of of at least 50% from pre-test results versus post test results among students who participate in RTSWS workshops.

3. At least 50% of students will state they are either very likely or extremely likely to explore a major in Business, Finance, or Economics.

4. Increase financial and investment literacy among high school students.

5. Improve the understanding of the financial responsibilities of college life and life in the workplace.

6. Help our students understand the long term benefits of saving and investing early in their life and review college lending habits.

RTSWS is facilitated 100% by female financial professionals and has four components:
Financial & Investment Literacy Workshops (Fall): Once a week, for 5 consecutive weeks, similar to a before or after school extracurricular, the one-hour classroom workshops utilize hands-on projects to cover financial and investment literacy knowledge. Volunteer female financial professionals use our cutting-edge curriculum to guide and empower students to operate as financial advisors to a variety of fictitious clients, dive into investment portfolios, and launch into foundational stock market understanding. Tackling both of the reasons girls are not choosing STEM professions - that they need to see women in the profession and see their female peers choosing the profession. With 3 sets of curriculum, and none being a prerequisite for the other, the program can be sustained in a single high school for 3 years without repeating content.
Wall Street Experience Field Trip (Fall): The half-day field trip is a capstone event providing students an opportunity to visit a Local institution gaining a rare view into these professional settings. The girls, most of which if not all have never been in a professional environment and often having their first glimpse into the world of finance, tour departments learning of business functions and hear from female financial professionals of differing seniority to expand their insight into career possibilities. As Pelly Papoutsis (Math teacher/coordinator of student affairs at NYC Department of Education) and Yvonne Melnitsky (Business Teacher at NYC Department of Education ) shared with us how our program is life altering and a “once in a lifetime experience” for their students.
Mentorship (Spring): We are changing the student to guidance counselor ratio from a national average of 482:1 to 2:1. During our 5 -1 hour sessions, students are matched at a 2:1 ratio, 2 students to 1 mentor forming potential life-long relationships and invaluable social capital providing a gateway into the industry. Students and mentors engage in college and career readiness discussions, roleplaying of interviewer/interviewee, college selection, resume preparation, career choices including those on our Internship/Job Portal, and do skills assessments. If old enough, mentors help students create a LinkedIn profile and discuss social media etiquette and networking. The 2:1 ratio is important as most students don’t receive direct guidance from an adult during these formative years.
Internship & Job (IJ) Portal (Post RTSWS Program): RTSWS is connecting its students to our partner organizations to high school & college internships and job opportunities. Launched in 2021 it is one of our most highly visited web pages as students & partner organizations come to either post a job opportunity or search for employment opportunities that the students can apply to.

RTSWS has shown continual, progressive growth since our launch in 2013. Our launch began in one school in Nashville and we have grown to offering our programming in numerous cities across the US and have even expanded into Canada. More expansion is imminent. RTSWS has been funded to date from a number of private gifts, corporate grants and foundation grants from all across the country. The Executive Director, the growing Board of Directors and Advisory Board, are all working on a diversified fundraising plan which includes grants from corporate, private and public funders as well as fundraising events.

RTSWS has had tremendous success since its’ launch in 2013.

2016-
ED invited to The White House by The White House Council on Women and Girls to Conference on Inclusive STEM education.
Invited to ring market bell at NASDAQ, in recognition of our vision and impact on financial literacy and increasing diversity.
2017
Expanded into Dallas (sponsored by Fidelity Investments) & Charlotte (sponsored by LPL Financial and MFS).
Named by Ellevest as a resource for our “Future Female Leaders” alongside GoldieBlox, Girls Who Code and The Girls Scouts.

2018

RTSWS selected as TN nonprofit recipient of TN Senators Taste of the South Gala.
Expansion into 6 new cities: Los Angeles, Omaha, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Merrimack, Raleigh and Atlanta.

2019

Our founder was awarded the Betty Cook Award which is given annually to a woman who has dedicated herself to the advancement of women.

2020

In Jan 2020, RTSWS was featured in a segment of The Today Show as part of National Mentoring Month.

In March 2020, RTSWS was featured in Honda’s Community Partner spotlight. We’re thrilled to be included in this series highlighting the wonderful work Honda supports.

Our proposal “Equal Opportunity in Finlit and Finance” was to be featured at the SXSWEDU conference in March 2020. Unfortunately, it was postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.