Meet Angel Rich, the entrepreneur whose app tackles financial literacy for youth

Financial literacy among youth is a necessity in today’s global world. To meet that need, entrepreneur and Washington, D.C., native Angel Rich has turned her passion into an app, and she’s getting recognized for it.

Rich, a Hampton University graduate, developed Credit Stacker, an app that teaches students about personal finance, credit management and entrepreneurship through games and simulation exercises. She’s won business competitions and has been featured in Forbes and mentioned by former first lady Michelle Obama’s organization, and her notoriety is continuing to rise despite challenges.

In 2015 in an interview with the business website 1776, Rich said she knew she wanted to start a company geared toward financial literacy to help youths when she was 6 years old. She launched The Wealth Factory Inc. in 2013, along with co-founder Courtney Keen, and created her brainchild, Credit Stacker, which she’d been working on since 2009.

“Our mission is to provide equal access to quality financial education all across the world,” Rich said in the interview. “We feel as though that anyone who has a dime in their pockets should also have financial literacy to go along with it.”

The D.C.-based firm has a financial literacy model that uses online gaming to develop skills that will help youths understand the financial gap between America’s haves and have-nots. She wrote the book The History of the Black Dollar, published in April, in which she explains this phenomenon.

One way Credit Stacker helps youths is by opening their minds to understanding credit reports and the scoring system using gaming and simulation. It has been enhanced to help teachers in classrooms customize students’ experiences.

The app is set up to receive funds from advertisers and contracts with organizations such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the D.C. Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking.

In May, Forbes posed the question “Could The Next Steve Jobs Be A Black Woman?” in a story that featured Rich. At that time the app had been downloaded 24,000 times. Now with more than 200,000 downloads, Credit Stacker is growing, and it’s poised to become one of the best products in the country dealing with financial literacy.

Rich won Prudential’s annual National Case competition for her technology-based marketing plan. She worked with the company as a global market research analyst, where she conducted more than 70 financial behavior modification studies. Rich parted ways with Prudential in 2012. According to Forbes, she’d raised $6 billion for the company and received a $30,000 bonus and an opportunity to have her education paid for to obtain a master’s degree in business administration from Wharton. She declined and went full throttle to run her own company and make her app a reality.

While she is succeeding, she’s said her major challenge has been playing on a level field as a black woman in business and technology. She told Forbes her “competitor raised $75 million. I won best of financial product and best learning game. My company raised only $200,000.”

Less than 20 percent of venture capital money goes to women-owned companies, and the numbers are slimmer for black women. According to a report by #ProjectDiane, black women represent only 4 percent of all women-led tech startups in the United States.

But this is not stopping Rich from reaching the company’s goals. According to the website Business Women, Credit Stacker was named the “best financial literacy product in the country” by the Office of Michelle Obama, the “best learning game in the country” by the Department of Education and the “best solution in the world for reducing poverty” by JPMorgan Chase. It has won first place in several business competitions, including the Industrial Bank Small Business Regional Competition and the Black Enterprise Elevator Pitch Competition.

Credit Stacker is free and available in 40 countries. It has also been translated into four languages. Despite the odds, Rich is continuing to press forward, and she has the support of people and organizations across the board.

More about Rich:

• In 2010, Prudential’s CEO asked Rich to lead President Barack Obama’s Veterans Initiative Research Study, and her recommendations were announced in the State of the Union address.
• In 2011, Rich conceived the first African American Financial Experience Study, which now serves as the benchmark across the financial services industry for marketing to blacks.
• In 2012, Rich was recognized with a Presidential Achievement Award for Exceptional Research and Innovation for helping Prudential save $6 billion, rising from No. 16 to No. 4 in service in one year.