One of the best decisions Ross Graydon said he has ever made was joining the Junior Investment Club, a partnership between 100 Black Men of America—a volunteer organization that provides mentorship to minority youths—and Wells Fargo that allows young people to practice investing through a curriculum-based simulation.

The experience certainly seems to have paid off for Graydon, a high school student in Las Vegas who recently got to participate in the 2024 Junior Investment Club Competition at the 38th Annual Conference of the 100 Black Men of America in Atlanta, Georgia. Graydon and his teammates, all representing 100 Black Men of Las Vegas, took third in the contest.

“(We were) not expecting to get to third place, because along the journey we had a lot of hiccups,” said Graydon, 16. “It must have seemed like we weren’t going to make it, but we pushed through.”

The 5-year-old Junior Investment Club gives students a virtual $100,000 to invest in the SIFMA Foundation’s Stock Market Game, an online simulation, over more than a dozen weeks. Nearly 800 students compete nationwide.

At the conference in Atlanta, select students presented the culmination of their project, said Keilana Stephenson, 13, a local seventh-grader and member of the third-place team.

“I feel like we did a good job,” Stephenson said alongside Graydon and their teammate Pharoah Washington at a Wells Fargo in the Las Vegas Valley. “And we will do better—like a lot better—next year.”

Though this was the trio’s first year competing in the Junior Investment Club, they did a tremendous job giving their 10-minute presentation to a crowd of nearly 100 people at the conference, and then fielding questions from judges, according to Rhonda Nolen, program manager at 100 Black Men of Las Vegas.

Of the five teams competing out of the Las Vegas chapter, she said, Stephenson, Graydon and Washington were the team consistently among the top five in the country over the course of the program.

“We’re always trying to educate the next generation so they can make better choices for their family members and things of that nature,” Nolen said of 100 Black Men of Las Vegas. “And so the younger you expose children to different things, the better they are.”

The Junior Investment Club gives Las Vegas teenagers the opportunity to travel or meet people who they might not have had otherwise had the chance to, she said, and teaches them what they have the potential to be.

The team’s instructors were one example for students, including Fineza Tangua, executive director of Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management in the Western division, and Kirk Richards.

Richards, a member of 100 Black Men of Las Vegas and a lead instructor for the Junior Investment Club, said he’s extremely proud of the winning Las Vegas team and all the hard work they did.

“They’ve come a long way,” he said. “From being shy to barely wanting to talk on the mic, even during the presentation, and things like that—to now … they didn’t know it was gonna turn into this. And that’s the ‘why’ you do these things.”

Now, even more young people will have the chance to take advantage of the Junior Investment Club. According to a recent news release, a $600,000 grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation will expand the program to 30 more markets nationwide.

Nolen called the expansion “fantastic” and emphasized how important it is to teach youths good financial habits from a young age.

“Because the more kids we can get exposed to the banking business, the better it is for us,” she said. “It’s better for children, it’s better for their families. We absolutely want to make sure that the students learn about financial literacy.”

For Washington, the oldest member of the third-place Junior Investment Club team out of Las Vegas at age 17, the program has taught him the importance of being patient with money, and not spending it all at once.

Investing is a fun way to take chances, he said.

“You’ll see us next year,” he added.

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