“Girls cannot be what they cannot see,” says Marilyn Mohrman-Gillis, executive director of the CFP Board Center for Financial Planning.
With that thought in mind, the center and an organization dedicated to the financial education of girls, known as Rock the Street, Wall Street, are launching a program to interest more high school girls in careers in financial services.
The educational program consists of five one-hour lessons presented to high school girls to educate them about finances and to raise the awareness among them of financial planning as a career. The goal is to narrow the gender gap in financial planning.
“Financial planning can be a creative and dynamic career for women -- but there’s an awareness problem,” says Mohrman-Gillis. “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 started in October at William Cullen Bryant High School in Long Island City, N.Y. Hour-long sessions are being presented to the students once a week for five weeks. The sessions will be capped off with a Wall Street experience field trip in which the students will visit female financial professionals in their offices and on the floors of trading rooms on Wall Street.
Maura Cunningham, founder and executive director of Rock The Street, Wall Street, says, “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.”