This Young Bed-Stuy Founder Is Turning Sneakers Into Money Lessons

BED-STUY— For students who know StockX, the stock market can start with a sneaker. The online marketplace lets people buy and sell sneakers at changing prices.

Aaliyah Duah, 23, uses the platform to explain a less familiar kind of exchange to New York City high school students: buying and selling shares of companies.

Through her organization, Financial Revolution, she turns everyday brands, music and games into lessons on investing, entrepreneurship and building wealth.

“When you compare stocks to things that students are familiar with, they now are able to connect the dots,” Duah said.

On Tuesday, Duah won the $200,000 David Prize, which recognizes New Yorkers working to reshape their communities.

She plans to use the award to bring Financial Revolution into more high school classrooms, build out its digital programs and create more financial-literacy games.

Duah started the program during the pandemic, when she returned to her Bed-Stuy home with a closet full of clothes and shoes.

“But none of that meant anything,” she said. “I realized that what I was being taught to spend my money on had no value.”

Duah, then a Virginia State University student, began teaching herself about investing and financial literacy.

She read Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki’s popular personal-finance book, which argues for building wealth through assets and investing rather than relying solely on a paycheck.

The approach differed from what Duah had grown up hearing: save your money, and hold on to it.

Duah grew up in a neighborhood where building wealth has long been complicated by barriers to homeownership and lending.

In 2024, 19.7 percent of Bed-Stuy residents owned their homes, compared with 32.7 percent citywide, while 25.8 percent lived below the poverty line, according to the NYU Furman Center.

"I learned about financial literacy through the book," she said. "I didn't even realize that was a thing."

Then, learning about finances became an obsession.

She listened to podcasts and sought out people who understood money.

Soon, she began sharing what she learned online, and viewers started turning to her with questions about investing and managing money.

She responded by creating a roughly 30-page guide to investing in the stock market, answering the questions people had been asking her online.

The guide eventually became a book and led to her first Financial Revolution event, a book signing in Brooklyn.

The organization now works with schools through interactive workshops, with a model Duah describes as “young people teaching young people.”

In the workshop, students learn financial terms through rap lyrics and test their knowledge with a card game she created, Broke or Brilliant.

“I think gamifying things is the best way to get students to understand concepts because they’re learning, but they’re having so much fun that they don’t even realize it,” Duah said.

The advice Duah gives students begins before they buy their first stock: start early.

Financial decisions compound over time, she tells them.

The sooner someone learns how money works, the more time they have to put that knowledge to use.

“You have to first believe that it’s possible for you to become wealthy,” Duah said.