Ryan Mack

Known as The Financial Evangelist, he has spent his career carrying one message to every corner of the world: financial literacy is freedom, and no community should be left out of the conversation. Founder and President of MainStreet, he is the author of Living in the Village, Playing Smart, Spoken Truth from the Youth, The Stop and Frisk Handbook, and Provisions for Abundance, and a co-author of The Black Male Handbook with Kevin Powell and The Covenant in Action with Tavis Smiley. Living in the Village has been adopted as core curriculum in prisons, reentry programs, and community organizations nationwide. He teaches financial literacy through biblical principles, and has delivered sermons on faith and finance in churches around the world. His program design work has reached some of the largest membership organizations in America. He created financial education initiatives for 1199 SEIU, the largest union local in the country with 450,000 members, and built curriculum for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the nation's second-largest veterans service organization with 1.4 million members. He has also partnered with the UAW and the Utility Workers Union of America to bring financial wellness to working families. His stage is intentionally without borders. He has taught financial literacy in South Africa, Ghana, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, and has spoken everywhere from the boardrooms of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KPMG, and Andersen Consulting to the housing units of Rikers Island and correctional facilities across the country. The message never changes — only the room does. A frequent voice in national media, he has appeared on CNN and CNBC to break down economic policy, credit, homeownership, and wealth building in language people can actually use. Whether the audience is a Wall Street trading floor, a union hall, a sanctuary, or a cell block, he leaves them with the same thing: a plan, and the belief that they are capable of executing it.