Rising Early with Billie Simmons of Daylight
By: Tash Moore
Tags: Partnerships, LGBTQ, Technology, Banking, Diversity In Tech

Quench Finance: Queer and Trans black, indigenous, and people of color are part of historically disenfranchised groups. On one hand, queerness is a source of discrimination as well as racial inequity. How does Daylight support BIPOC financial futures?

Billie: So I think the first step is recognizing that across the different intersections that we exist in, whether it’s race, background, sexuality, gender, we all have different levels of access to financial resources. Black and indigenous people have the biggest hurdles in accessing equity. 20% of black LGBT people are completely unbanked or underbanked altogether. That’s a huge part of the LGBT community. Our community is huge and broad, but we have a uniting level of discrimination that we can support each other through.

Billie Simmons, co-founder and chief of staff at Daylight Banking for LGBT+

Daylight makes sure race is not ignored or that we’re telling a story that all LGBT+ people face the same hurdles. With our written content and guides we are highlighting community across specific intersections within the LGBT+ community. We have a great first coach on the platform too, Kenny Davis (The Trans Capitalist), who is a black trans man. He sits across a lot of intersections and gives perspectives that I as a white trans woman can’t, for example.

It’s also important to value diversity within Daylight itself, which involves improving our hiring pipelines and recognizing the value in our intersections when interviewing. If the whole LGBT community isn’t represented internally as well as externally then we’re not going to be able to build a great product.

QF: Daylight offers coaching and community, what are some features that would uplift BIPOC?

Billie: A big impetus for financial coaching for us was hearing from LGBT+ people that when they’re talking to financial advisors they’re usually straight, white, [and] cisgender. There’s this level of misunderstanding and assumptions that are being made about their lifestyle and their goals. There’s this lack of shared language, which leads to not being able to explain parts about our lives that affect our money.

Kenny focuses on the mind-money connection. Your financial health is tied to your mindset. Having coaches that are BIPOC allow for a deeper level of understanding and a deeper level of comfort. It’s a very vulnerable thing to do to talk about your income, your spending habits, and your worries. Being able to supply a range of coaches across backgrounds is an important part of any online community.

We also have guidelines and code of conduct policies that are zero tolerance which is key to the success of our platform, and we’re always actively moderating the community tab and ensuring that it feels like a safe space.

The broader impetus of the educational content is that there is a lot of generalist advice out there but very little LGBT+ specific content. Things like navigating adoption, mortgage approvals, and high student loan debt, are affected by being LGBT+. We’ll have writers that are part of the LGBT+ community including BIPOC and the specific experiences that come with those intersections. The more specific you can get with content, the more relevant and useful it will be to the member.

QF: Daylight seems to be a bridge between traditional resources and modern inclusivity. How does Daylight intend to build an equitable community behind the scenes?

Billie: We are growing our inclusivity as we grow as a company, along with BIPOC writers and coaches.

We won’t always get it right and something that’s important to me is being able to admit when we haven’t and being open to feedback that may feel negative. People saying you’re not good enough can be hard. But people are only going to say that to us for the right reasons.

We’re slowly putting together an advisory board that already has BIPOC representation and we’re going to ensure that we can build things for the whole of the LGBT community. It’s a collaborative process ultimately.

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Billie Simmons (she/her) is the co-founder and chief of staff at Daylight. Previously, she founded a startup to help trans and non-binary people access safe services. Her background is in marketing and software engineering, at fintech focused companies such as Techstars and Anthemis group. She regularly speaks on LGBT+ initiatives in mental health and technology and has spoken at, amongst others, Google, WeWork and Computer World Weekly.

This story was told in partnership with Daylight, Banking for LGBT+ folx, by LGBT+ folk; and is dedicated to providing a wealth of experience and perspective.