Welcome to Changemakers, a new project from Money that profiles 50 innovators shaping Americans’ finances.
We celebrated our 50th anniversary this year with cool initiatives like Money Classic, a newsletter, and Money Archives, a treasure trove of vintage magazine stories. But while honoring our history, we also wanted to look to the future — to tell readers like you exactly who they should be paying attention to.
Over the years, Money has made a name for itself with best-in-class personal finance advice and franchises like Best Places to Live and Best Colleges. Changemakers is slightly different — rather than using hard data, we relied on the expertise of our editorial team to generate the list. After all, who knows the financial world better than the journalists who cover it day in and day out?
From 174 nominations, we whittled it down to 50, with disruptors in entrepreneurship, politics, art, labor, philanthropy the gig economy, financial feminism, consumer protection and more.
Together, we came up with a wide-ranging list of people we think are making meaningful, positive change in personal finance. Some names you’ll know; some names you won’t. It’s not just celebrities, not just influencers and certainly not just wealthy Wall Streeters — we decided to feature Changemakers of all ages, from all communities, with audiences of all sizes.
That allowed us to highlight people like Kriti Sarav, a high schooler who produces a financial literacy podcast for teens, alongside well-known policymakers like Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. We intentionally put stars like Killer Mike, a famous activist for Black economic empowerment, in league with Betsy Mayotte, a student loan “nerd” who posts debt advice on Reddit. Some of our Changemakers, like the massive Women on FIRE Facebook group, aren’t individuals at all.
Our Changemakers fall into six categories: advocates, creators, educators, experts, leaders and trailblazers. Admittedly, there’s a lot of crossover. Many of our leaders are experts; many of our educators are trailblazers… but hopefully you get the idea.
We invite you to explore the website and meet our Changemakers. Then tell us who you think we’re missing.