Lemondrop

The number of young women on Wall Street is falling at an alarming rate, and no one knows why, reports The Wall Street Journal.

More specifically, the number of women between age 20 and 24 entering finance industry jobs has dropped 21 percent over the past decade. There are a lot of different theories, the paper says, surrounding why this might be.

Are women leaving in droves to start families, as the Journal suggests? Has Wall Street -- as another expert posits -- lost its allure? Hard to believe when Michael Douglas will be reprising the role of Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," the much-anticipated sequel opening this very weekend.

For me, the truth was much simpler.

In 2008, at the age of 24, I walked away from a promising career on Wall Street -- and an even more promising paycheck -- to pursue my dream of starting my own company.

I went to work on Wall Street right after graduating from Harvard in 2006. The markets were hot, and many of my female classmates were making the same career move. When I started on the trading floor, I was the only woman on the desk, but it never bothered me. Overall, I had a great experience. But there was an idea taking up space in the back of my mind -- one that could help thousands of women better understand their finances.

I first came up with the idea for my company, LearnVest, when I was a senior at Harvard College and realized I had never taken a single class on personal finance. I quickly discovered that I was not alone. Personal finance is not taught in the majority of high schools, colleges and graduate schools across the nation, yet the average person makes six to 10 financial decisions a day. That is a lot of unguided financial thinking!

So, in the fall of 2008, when most of America was hiding money underneath its collective mattress, I took a leap of faith, left Wall Street, gave up a Harvard Business School degree and invested my personal savings to launch LearnVest. I knew that now more than ever, women needed a trusted place to learn about their finances.

And I wasn't the only woman I know who left Wall Street around then. My fellow Harvard classmate (and now LearnVest Director of Marketing) Allison Fast has a similar story. She left Wall Street in May of 2009 after three great years on the trading desk at a top-tier firm, to pursue an opportunity at Learnvest. What brought her? She saw a tremendous opportunity in joining an early-stage entrepreneurial venture, and with the financial system in flux, she was willing to take the risk.

Of course, in the beginning, not everyone saw it the same way we did.

When I first decided to start LearnVest, I was repeatedly told that I would not be able to raise capital, given the terrible economic environment. Even worse, I had plenty of critics tell me that women were not online. However, I was confident that I had a clearly articulated business plan, that my product solved a real problem (everyone -- young, old, rich, poor, male, female -- needed help with their money), and that I would be able to raise capital despite the economic downturn.

To date, Leanvest has raised over $5 million in angel and venture-backed investments. Our latest round of funding resulted in $4.5 million from Accel Partners, who backed Facebook, Groupon, Kayak and more. Our team at LearnVest has built an innovative, hip and interactive online resource that provides free content, tools and community to help women everywhere gain control of their financial future. We have educated over one million women on their personal finances.

So, if you were to ask me now, was my decision to leave Wall Street to start my own company worth it? I'd have to say, absolutely. As would Allison. We are actually improving lives, and I enjoy working every day because of it.


Alexa von Tobel is the Founder and CEO of LearnVest, the leading independent personal finance website for women. Alexa came up with the idea for LearnVest in 2006, during her senior year at Harvard when she realized she, and most of her peers, had never had any formal education about how to effectively manage their finances. Alexa searched for reliable financial guidance and consistently came up overwhelmed or disappointed. Thus, the LearnVest mission was born – to make trusted personal financial information accessible to millions of women. In addition to LearnVest, Alexa is the co-founder of L.W.A.L.A., a 501c3 focused on fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa.