Sabrina Lamb is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WorldofMoney.org, a non-profit dedicated to providing 120 annual immersive hours of classroom and online youth financial education in the United States and Africa. She contributed to Ghana’s original Ministry of Finance Digital Financial Services Policy.
Sabrina is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wekeza Holdings, Inc, a U.S.-based fintech that enables the African diaspora in the United States and abroad to invest in U.S. publicly traded companies. Wekeza is the Silicon Harlem C-Better Pitch Fest Competition Grand Prize winner.
Sabrina has appeared at Fintech Islands, Fintech Meetup Conference, Africa Diaspora Investment Forum, Africa Tech Summit, Silicon Harlem, Haiti Tech Summit, Harlem Tech Summit, and the Money 20/20 conference. She is a graduate of the Y Combinator Start-Up School, a former member of the Master Your Card African American Advisory Council, and a global advocate for financial inclusion.
A WBLS-FM commentator and former stand-up comic, Sabrina is also the best-selling author of the NAACP Image Awards nominated “Do I Look Like An ATM? A Parent’s Guide to Raising Financially Responsible Africa-American Children” (Chicago Review Press), the satirical “A Kettle of Vultures…Left Beak Marks On My Forehead” (Simon and Schuster), and more.
Sabrina was named 16th on the list of 50 Top Black Women in Entertainment in Black Noir magazine. She was a #NATPE television pitch finalist. She has written celebrity cover stories for Essence, Heart and Soul, and Black Elegance. She is a three-time finisher of the New York City Marathon.
Connect with Sabrina on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from Fintech South 2025 at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Now. Here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here broadcasting live from Fintech South. So excited to be talking to my next guest Sabrina Lamb with Wekeza. Welcome.
Sabrina Lamb: Thank you. Honored to be here.
Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what your app to tell us about Wekeza. How you serving folks.
Sabrina Lamb: So Wekeza means save and invest in Swahili. And our mission is to turn on the economic lights, where communities not only in the United States, but around the world, have zero access to multilingual financial education, as well as the ability to invest in U.S. stocks and ETFs.
Lee Kantor: So what was the genesis of the idea? Had the business get started.
Sabrina Lamb: So I’m also the founder of a long standing nonprofit called World of Money, the leading provider of immersive financial education for children from pre-K to college. We serve not only children in the United States, but for African countries. And so over the years, I’ve heard from adults saying, this is great for children, but adults need this opportunity as well for learning. And then I was speaking at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, and meeting with regulators and educators and families and hearing what were their challenges to not only receive financial education, but not only to invest in their current in their equities in Kenya, but also in the United States, and thus Wakiso was born.
Lee Kantor: So when you’re building out a curriculum in Africa as opposed to America, how does it differ?
Sabrina Lamb: First, understand the culture. Every culture is unique. The language is unique. And that’s why we provide the curriculum. For example, in Kenya, it’s Kiswahili and it’s a different dialect than in Tanzania. In Nigeria, it’s Hausa and Yoruba, as well as Yoruba and Igbo. In Ghana, it’s Twi. And in certain francophone African countries it’s French. And so each but integrating that curriculum, it’s not just about teaching budgeting, but it’s also inter grading all the financial norms that exists or reflected in that unique culture and country.
Lee Kantor: So how kind of from a cultural standpoint, how does it differ when it comes to, like you mentioned, investing in equities. Is that something that people are risk tolerant or risk averse, like how do you kind of explain the opportunity and the risk because, uh, you know, it’s not for everybody.
Sabrina Lamb: It’s not for everyone. And that’s why we have a very low cost, low accessibility opportunity, a dollar a month, a dollar per trade. But we don’t want everyone just to run off and start investing without understanding what are their financial goals, what is their risk tolerance, how to research a company. And so you start there with the education and then encourage them to choose the company that meets their their ethics, their long term goals. It’s not a get rich quick. And that’s what we have to encourage and teach everyone to move beyond, because that’s not what investing is, right?
Lee Kantor: But there is the the benefit of compounding.
Sabrina Lamb: Absolutely. And that’s why we encourage a long term strategy. You’re investing. You’re not trading every day. You’re not in and out. It’s a long term strategy. So if you’re investing in any company, whether you have a fractional or a whole share, then you you’re investing because you’ve done the proper research to to hang on, to hang on to it over the long term.
Lee Kantor: So why was it important for you to be here at Fintech South?
Sabrina Lamb: So I love being inspired by so many innovators. They’re doing very important work in terms of, you know, creating not only inclusion but equity, not only here in the United States but in other countries. And so I learn and become friends and see how we can encourage and work together on particular initiatives.
Lee Kantor: So are you coming here primarily to for education, for the networking aspect or looking for partners like, are you kind of shopping for people who kind of can buy into the mission and who would like to financially support this type of curriculum?
Sabrina Lamb: So. So all of the above, because what Casa are business model is not just B2C, it’s B2B and B2C. So we also partner with schools as well as governments and cities. And so therefore we welcome all of those opportunities in fintech. South is one of those places to meet them.
Lee Kantor: So, um, are you here just kind of walking around meeting people, or are you, um, are you speaking and explaining the opportunity to folks?
Sabrina Lamb: Yes. Had the great opportunity to speak during, uh, the Democratizing Access to Financial Services yesterday with other, uh, founders yesterday on the main stage.
Lee Kantor: And then so for folks who didn’t hear the speech, what were some of the things you covered?
Sabrina Lamb: Well, one of the things is that, I mean, even though all the other panelists was about five of us on the stage is the commonalities, even though we have different services in terms of, you know, how we how we fund our our business, what is our mission, how to keep going. And so but what we told the audience is that we must or we encourage the audience, rather we understand the building and you have your own vision, but make sure the customer, the user that you want to build your company for is front and center as opposed to building. To build with. By listening to their concerns and their pain points.
Lee Kantor: So, um, what kind of trends are you seeing when it comes to this type of education? Or is are you kind of leveraging online learning or digital? Uh, you know, kind of maybe micro learning, like like how how is it changing for you?
Sabrina Lamb: What’s happening? And it’s it’s very encouraging when I receive an email from, you know, a customer from Tanzania that they have the exact same seeking spirit for economically empowering their life as someone here in Atlanta. And so what we do is we provide not only ongoing online financial education, but introductions to licensed lawyers and financial planners that they want to extend their communication and share their financial goals with a licensed professional. We also have digital online town halls for all of our members as well.
Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share maybe that illustrates the impact that it’s making?
Sabrina Lamb: Well, I will say that because as I, I shared before, I also found it a nonprofit called World of Money that’s been around for decades. And many of those young people are now adults, and they have, you know, their parents and how they’re taking the learnings that they learn early in life and applying it to what Kisa because now they have a platform coming from a trusted entity, which was World of Money. Now they can actually use their financial education to actually invest.
Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you with love?
Sabrina Lamb: Introductions to financial institutions. We’ve already partnered with Mastercard. I created the curriculum for Mastercard to serve millions of their customers. Would love to partner with other fintechs who not only need investing services, but know multilingual financial education services. And that’s what I welcome.
Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, connect with you or somebody on the team, what’s the best way to do that.
Sabrina Lamb: Sabrina at Waukesha. Com that’s Sabrina at Waukesha. Com and also I am on LinkedIn.
Lee Kantor: And then is there a website for wikis.
Sabrina Lamb: W e k e a.com. That’s w e k e e a. Com.
Lee Kantor: Well Sabrina, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.
Sabrina Lamb: Thank you. Leigh appreciate you.
