There’s a loud chatter as everyone walks into the room and sees all the chairs in a circle, prepared for the weekly chatter. The girls get quiet as they sit, excited to prepare for their future.

The Invest in Girls club meets every X-block in the Unified Arts building. The club is led by co-presidents and sophomores Lauren Fisch and Casey McCarthy and is advised by World of Money teacher Kelle Griffin. Their goal is to educate girls on the basics of finance to build financial literacy, whether that be for a future career in the field or simply daily life.

Meetings begin with circle discussions where members catch up with one another and go over their plan for the day. Fisch said the skills members learn through the club will help them after high school.

“It’s important for everyone to understand how finances work. In a lot of families, women aren’t included in financial decisions and aren’t given the tools that they need to contribute, so they are at a particular disadvantage,” Griffin said.

Fisch said she joined the club because she is interested in finance and wants to help others learn more about it.

In the future, Fisch said the group will enter small business competitions for more real life experience. They will also bring in outside speakers to teach members about more complicated topics. They want to extend their knowledge past the basics, and they even hope to go on a trip, Fisch said.

“We want to go on this trip to a business competition in Berlin where you create and pitch an idea to investors and come up with a business plan. If we can get this group of girls to stay for four years, we think it would be a really great opportunity,” Fisch said.

Junior Niloufar Enayat said finance is usually a male dominated industry, and she wasn’t interested in it until she joined the club.

Griffin said she hopes that everyone in the club will be ready to make their own financial decisions in the future.
“I hope to inspire some girls to go into entrepreneurship or finance, because those are really lucrative careers where women are underrepresented,” Griffin said. “Women in general don’t make as much money as men (according to the US census), at least if they are starting in a field where men have traditionally higher salaries.”