Pledge 1%'s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Angel Rich
CEO, The Wealth Factory
Washington DC, USA
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
I am the founder and CEO of The Wealth Factory. The Wealth Factory is a conglomeration of brands including WealthyLife, CreditRich, and CreditStacker. WealthyLife provides financial literacy education technology through games, curriculum, courses, and other FinTech products that walk users from birth to retirement in 12 interactive modules to exceed the personal finance common core standards. CreditRich rounds up account holders' spare change to pay your bills intelligently and improve your credit score by using our machine learning, proprietary algorithm to optimize your debt payments, customize financial education, and get you more loans approved. CreditStacker allows users to swap credit pieces to pay debt, achieve a high credit score, and learn from the multiple choice questions. I am also an author of 2 books: History of the Black Dollar and Black Woman Politics. I do a lot of public speaking as well regarding diversity, black history, fintech, and a variety of other topics.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
I love knowing that I am making a difference in my community and in the world. With my app CreditRich, I became the first Black American to partner with a major credit bureau. By making history this way, I am breaking down barriers for future generations to come behind me and do great things. Additionally, my business focuses on financial literacy because I want to be able to help people get the financial education they need to become more financially free.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years - what motivates you to keep going?
There have definitely been times that it has been tough, but I am a very resilient person. When I was young, I had a vision from God who laid out my whole life ahead of me. This vision, and knowing that I have God on my side, have helped keep pushing me forward. I have an amazing network of people who help me keep going every day, and that guide me through my challenges. I know that at the end of the day I am making a difference in the world and the work that I am doing matters, so no matter how hard things get I have to keep pushing and stay motivated to accomplish my goals.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
"Angel, there is no doubt in my mind you will be successful. But if you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together." This advice honestly changed my life because it shifted my entire approach. It helped me understand the importance of using my network and taking things slow to ensure that I am doing it right. I want to go together and work as a team to go as far as possible.
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
One thing that I had really been looking forward to is getting married! I got married on February 2nd in Washington DC on Black Lives Matter Plaza at the St Regis hotel. It was so beautiful and definitely one of the best days of my life. With work, I am really looking forward to some of the things we have coming with my app CreditRich. Unfortunately, I can't talk about a lot of it yet, but we have some really exciting things coming that I am definitely looking forward to sharing with the world.
