TANYA MENENDEZ, SNOWBALL WEALTH
Menendez was a cofounder of the much-celebrated start-up Maker’s Row, which helped connect small businesses to American manufacturers, before her interest pivoted to financial services. The shift was fueled by her identity as a first-generation college graduate, which led her to address student debt, something she saw as the most significant financial issue facing our generation. Snowball Wealth, an online platform which launches in March and for which Menendez is co-founder and CEO, takes a comparison shopping approach, offering users financial models to determine the most efficient plan to pay off their debt. “It’s affecting every single part of their life, including how they date, how they think about getting a job, their relationship with their family,” Menendez says of the target users. “We feel that if we can solve it, we can dramatically change the way that the future looks for women and for society as a whole.”
