Atlantic City residents need to be empowered, the city’s mayor said.
And he plans to provide them with those tools.
The start, he said, was a six-week investment cohort that brought former Wall Street analyst Ashley M. Fox to town.
Fox is the CEO of Empify, which combines empower and modify.
“We’re investing in human capital, and this is one of the programs that we’re going to expand upon this year,” Mayor Marty Small said at the graduation Tuesday. “And I’m just so happy that, as the mayor of the great city of Atlantic City, I could bring this program here for the people.”
For six weeks, she gave nearly 60 residents the tools she said will help them become investors and take control of their financial futures.
Empify has partnered with schools, corporations, nonprofits, and even financial education programs in the prison system. But Atlantic City is their first municipal partnership.
Local comedian, Michelle Tomko, was among those in the course, along with her new wife, Jean Burbee.
“What did we get out of it?” she asked. “We learned from the ground up about investing, from opening an account to researching stocks. The Empify website is incredibly interactive with chat rooms and accessibility to the instructors.
“We both now have people in our corner that we can reach out to,” she continued. “As a fantastic surprise, Empify is paying dividends. Every graduate is getting their initial investment matched up to $250. And, not to brag, but the 10 shares of stock I bought in the real world to satisfy a graduation requirement is up 3 percent. I’m hooked.”
This is just the start of these types of programs, Small promised.
“This is our administration’s dream, to help the good people of Atlantic City realize their dreams,” he said. “This is one of the programs we’re going to expand on this year.”
At last week’s graduation, Tomko talked to the mayor and Fox on behalf of BreakingAC. Here’s what they had to say:
