One night about seven years ago, double Husky Kadesh Simms Conroy had a dream.
With her Wishing Well community finance app, Simms Conroy has made that dream into a reality.
“In the dream it showed me this visual of a time that would come when we would need to really pool our resources and communities, and it showed this app,” Simms Conroy says. “So, it was a dream of a blueprint for something to come in the future. When I woke up, I started drawing what it looked like.”
Wishing Well is a peer-to-peer payment digital wallet that allows users to hold and save their money together as a group in individual “wells” and to use that money to support community goals, individual expenses and purchases.
“Essentially, they become their own bank,” Simms Conroy explains. “It’s a tool for those that won’t have access to large sums of capital to utilize the community to access that capital together.”
Simms Conroy says that the app has multiple benefits.
It is economically empowering because it allows individuals to raise capital without the processes and sometimes onerous credit or collateral requirements of a traditional bank.
It is also socially empowering because it can be used by individuals in communities underserved by financial institutions.
“Women’s ventures tend to get the least amount of financing, the least amount of capital and people of color tend to get the least amount of financing and the least amount of capital,” Simms Conroy says. “So it is helping to create a more financially inclusive world by using the communities that we live in to bank with. We decide, the banks don’t decide.”
Already, users with a beta version of the app have been able to pay for homes, emergency bills and college costs, Simms Conroy says. The app fully launches in November.
It is the latest step on what Simms Conroy calls her “unique journey.”
Simms Conroy emigrated with her parents and five brothers from Jamaica to Roxbury when she was 11 years old.
“I hate to speak anything negative about my past or my future, but we were pretty poor,” Simms Conroy says. “There was a little poverty going on there, but my parents did the best that they could.”
But education was important to the family.
The family lived across the street from Northeastern, and as a seventh grader at Boston Latin Academy, Simms Conroy applied for Balfour Academy, a summer academic program affiliated with the university.
She called the academy “a very robust program,” after which Simms Conroy was accepted with a full tuition scholarship to Northeastern as an undergraduate. She graduated with a degree in business with a focus on information technology and human resources in 2001.
After working for several years in the local nonprofit sector, Simms Conroy returned to the university for an MBA, graduating in 2008 with a focus on social entrepreneurship.
She says that the university’s transformation — and with it the surrounding community transformation — inspired her.
“I got to see both worlds and live in both worlds,” Simms Conroy says. “Being able to witness that in my Northeastern journey also shows the ability and the power that you can transform a community through individuals and through systems and through people who have the right heart for justice and the right heart for ensuring that communities that are marginalized are not marginalized any longer.”
That journey culminates with Simms Conroy being named the recipient of the Powering Social Impact award at the 2024 Women Who Empower Innovator Awards.
“I was walking by the Northeastern campus as a 15-year-old, as a 16-year-old, and somehow or other faith, and destiny, and God ensured that I was in the right place at the right time with the right people,” Simms Conroy says. “It was an internal driver and something that said that there was more and there is greater, not just for me but for my community.”
As for future steps on the journey, Simms Conroy says she envisions “wells” where people can save their money popping up in communities around the world.
“I would love to see as a result of the wells that communities and people are thriving and living a vision of their life that aligns with all of the pillars of well-being — so emotional well-being, financial well-being, physical well-being,” Simms Conroy says.
“We all know that money and the access to finances and resources are directly linked to how people live their lives and their ability to experience financial freedom,” Simms Conroy continues. “So, I want it to scale, and I want it to empower people to do what they need with their finances and to experience freedom in all areas of their lives.”