This year, Lab Fellowship is supporting innovators who are working with data to transform the financial system. In the first of a series of blog posts profiling the Fellows, we’re delighted to introduce Georgia Stewart, co-founder of Tumelo.
Tumelo is an investment app on a mission to help build a better future by influencing powerful companies to behave more ethically. Tumelo offers everyone the opportunity to be an engaged, ethical investor, starting from as little as £1. Members specify the causes that matter most to them – whether that’s gender equality, sustainability or supporting new technology – and Tumelo uses that information to build personalised, positive investment portfolios. In this way, Tumelo’s members can use their money to help generate social or environmental impact, as well as securing returns.
But it’s not just about investing – Tumelo also empowers their members to influence corporate behaviour. Acknowledging that their members are not only shareholders of their portfolio companies, but also stakeholders of our society and planet, the Tumelo app displays and tracks the impact that companies are having on the world, and facilitates direct engagement between members and the companies they’ve invested in. Through social media campaigns and partnerships with leading NGOs, Tumelo enables its members to celebrate businesses that are having a positive impact and encourage those who are falling behind to improve.
As she prepares to launch Tumelo in 2019, Lab Fellowship has come at a great time for Georgia to build her leadership capacity and business skills, and connect and collaborate with the Lab community. Georgia explains:
“We’re a small fish in the big sea of financial services, so through the Fellowship I hope to meet people, form meaningful connections and maybe even partnerships, secure seed stage financing and learn how to be a better leader for our team and for the future of Tumelo.”
For Georgia, the mission of Tumelo is core to everything that they do. A real greenie, she studied ecology and climate change at Cambridge University and dreamed of being a conservationist. While being a fintech founder might be quite different from the fieldwork in Patagonia she’d envisioned for her future career, Georgia has created a route to live her values – and enable others to do the same – by building a financial system that works for people and planet:
“I bring a lot of heart to the table, because I passionately believe that everybody’s money – however much, however little – has a massive part to play in creating a prosperous future for us all.”
If you’re interested in Tumelo and would like to support them during the Fellowship, please contact Naomi Alexander Naidoo. To learn more about Lab Fellowship, visit filab.uk/fellowship.