A Letter from Founders:

Hi there,

Jessica and Mannie here, co-founders of Access Distributed. We’re delighted that you stopped by our website to learn more about our organization.

We met during our junior year internship, sitting back to back during our summer in investment banking at Morgan Stanley. We spent the summer and two full-time years afterward, followed by a couple of years investing in private equity, soaking in everything finance. After going to business school at Stanford, we were reflecting on just how lucky we felt to have the financial stability, network, and confidence to do seemingly anything we wanted. Truly the genesis came from our time in finance. Without a doubt, we wouldn’t be where we are today without starting our careers in finance.

To get into a career in finance, we were privileged to have a lot of things outside of our control go right. We had mentors who pointed us in the right direction and we went to schools that investment banks directly targeted. Further, despite being black (Mannie) and a woman (Jessica) and surrounded by people who didn’t look like us, we had support systems in place to help us succeed.

But what about the hardworking, bright, ambitious students who don’t have that luck? Who want to put the time into investing in their dreams, but don’t go to the ‘right’ schools, have the ‘right’ connections, or come from the ‘right’ background?

We created Access Distributed with a dream to meaningfully expand access to careers in finance for underrepresented students coming from underrepresented schools. But it’s more than expanding access to a career in finance: as many of you likely know, starting in finance has the potential to change a young person’s life trajectory completely. We built AD to expand access to that life trajectory.

Whether you’re a student interested in finance, a student who knows they want to break into finance, a professional who wants to change the faces of finance, or just someone curious about what the future looks like, we’re happy you’re here.