Influential Woman · Financial Literacy Education

Whitney Ramirez

Program Director for Financial Literacy Program, Diapers 2 Deposits | Financial Literacy

Baltimore, MD

Her Story

About Whitney

I founded Diapers to Deposits in 2016 after a pivotal moment as a DC public school teacher when a student asked me about money while I was teaching about tornadoes. That's when I realized I really wanted to be teaching about what our kids care about, and money was one of those things. Before teaching, I spent 15 years in transportation, working across New York City Transit, DC Transit, and Maryland Transit. The combination of what I learned from transportation and the classroom is how Financial Field Trips and this financial literacy idea was birthed. We provide financial literacy curriculum, programming, and expert instructors to deliver financial literacy in a culturally responsive way. If there are social media trends going on, we hop on that bandwagon and connect financial literacy to ensure the lesson resonates with the children. Our flagship program, Financial Field Trips, takes the learning we start inside the classroom and brings kids on our 12-passenger minibus to banks, credit unions, car dealerships, and investment properties to simulate the car buying process, the home buying process, and how to open accounts and qualify for what they want in the real world.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Whitney

01What do you attribute your success to?

My team. If I didn't have them, I probably would be overworked and exhausted. Without them, we can't keep growing. I was pretty stagnant for quite a bit, for a long time, until I decided to get a team, and then once I got one, you could quickly see changes in the company, the ability to revamp, and have clearer thoughts because you're not task-saturated. Yeah, the team.

02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

The best advice I've received was from my mother, who told me to go to sleep. I know it doesn't sound like entrepreneur advice, but it actually is. I was trying to do what I thought everybody else said to do on social media, like working 16-hour days and being up at 3 o'clock in the morning. I tried that, and no, I need to go to sleep so when I wake up in the morning, I have my freshest ideas, my brightest ideas, I'm focused, I'm not tired. It's not even just mindset. We operate better when we take care of ourselves first, and oftentimes you hear a lot of entrepreneurs say they work a lot of long hours, and if you try to sustain that over long periods of time, it's not a good thing. My mother said, Whitney, you don't operate well when you're tired. Go to sleep. So my best advice would be go to sleep, and in that means take care of yourself, and if you take care of yourself, you can continue to take care of others.

03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

Read the room. The reason for that is, especially women, we tend to be of a nurturing spirit, and if we tap into that femininity and that nurturing spirit, we can take care of those that are in the room, whether it be stakeholders, whether it be community members, whether it be investors. Pretty much asking them what do you want, and then just giving it to them. And then, in exchange, of course, they are either investing in your company or volunteering with you. So I would say read the room, and then give them what they want.

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