Morningstar - Q2 2023 - 56

Investors
Investing in the Future
These financial educators are broadening
the investor base.
Undiscovered Manager
62 Complementing the Core
Sector Rap
66
Taking the Long Road
User Profile
70 A Focus on Transitions
Veronica Peterson
MORNINGSTAR CONVERSATION
Morningstar observed Black History Month this
year by exploring the theme " Investing in
Community. " It's not just about giving back by
donating resources, but also about fostering
financial literacy in communities that have
historically been excluded from the investment
world. We kicked off the month with a
discussion with two popular personal finance
educators who are inspiring their growing
audiences to invest in their future.
Ashley Fox left Wall Street to found Empify, an
education organization that teaches both children
and adults financial literacy. Empify creates
digital content and interactive events curated to
teach all aspects of financial education, and
its users have saved and invested over $2.5 million.
Fox writes for Black Enterprise and Essence
magazines and has been featured on Jim Cramer,
TheStreet, Yahoo Finance, Forbes, and so on.
Shareef " Ross Mac " McDonald is a Wharton
School of Business-educated Chicago
native dedicated to championing financial literacy.
A former Wall Street analyst, Ross Mac is
now a media personality for Revolt TV, BET, and
TheStreet who uses his Maconomics brand
to empower people through merging education
and entertainment. Mac is featured in the recent
Netflix documentary Get Smart With Money.
Our conversation has been edited for length
and clarity.
Veronica Peterson: One of my reasons for working here
at Morningstar is because of our mission to empower
56
Morningstar Q2 2023
investor success. But if I can be honest, my personal
interest was so that I could learn finance. I did
not come from a family who had that background or
expertise in investing, and I think that's common in our
community. Why did you decide to go into finance?
Ashley Fox: I am from Philly. I am the first person
in my family to go to college, and I decided to
go to the best HBCU in the world, Howard
University. I majored in finance-one, because
I liked math and business. We were taught
how to dress. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we had
to wear black and blue suits. They taught
me how to eat, build a résumé, golf, everything.
I wanted to be rich and look good if I'm being
honest. At Howard, I had four internships
with top financial institutions. I wanted to do
investment banking because that at that time was
the highest-paying job. I did that for a summer,
completely hated it, and then I went on to work in
asset management.
I worked with millionaires and billionaires, so
I got exposed to what the wealthy people do with
their money, from where they shop, where they
travel, where they live, everything. As I started to
immerse myself in this world, I realized that
it was completely different from how I was raised.
By the time I was 23, I was making six figures,
and people thought I was rich. I'm traveling, I'm
wearing the nice clothes.
So, I essentially went into finance to make
money. I left Wall Street almost 10 years
ago because money, something we use every
single day of our life, is not taught in our school
system. You shouldn't have to major in
finance, work on Wall Street, to get exposed to
that information. I actually always wanted
to be a teacher, but teachers didn't make Wall
Morningstar - Q2 2023

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