Primary Job Title Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder Primary Organization Rapunzl - Invest. Share. Win.
Location Chicago, Illinois, United States Regions Greater Chicago Area, Great Lakes, Midwestern US Gender Male
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Myles Gage is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Rapunzl and an advocate for financial education, especially for individuals in underserved communities. Attending Ariel Community Academy on Chicago's south side exposed me to the stock market at a very young age, as financial literacy was the crux of its curriculum.
That's
why, subsequent to graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I developed Rapunzl with my highschool friend, Brian Curcio. Together we designed and developed an app that addresses the three roadblocks that prohibit many from understanding the stock market: fear, exposure, and accessibility.
We decided to provide users with a risk-free, $10,000 simulated portfolio in order to eliminate the fear we all first feel when we look at the stock market.
We then increased exposure by working with high schools and colleges and providing weekly, monthly, and (soon) annual competitions for cash prizes!
Finally we made the stock market accessible by integrating social media into our simulator. Users can connect with their friends, share how they trade, and discuss their investment strategies.
People need game-based learning tools which simulate the real world and contexualize their learning if they are ever to learn how to properly invest. Rapunzl provides an incentive to learn, a place to share findings, and a risk-free community to make mistakes along the way.
By partnering with UrbanX Learning, I oversee the Financial Pathways initiative in which Rapunzl lends its technology to make an impact in some of the nations most underserved communities. Financial Pathways offers scholarships, mentoring, and financial fluency tools to combat our financial illiteracy crisis and make success obtainable for all students, regardless of their background.
