Propel

Financial volatility is a fact of life in the American economy. Families who face financial hardship must navigate a set of tools that are fragmented, bureaucratic, technophobic, and expensive - right when they are most in need of world-class products and services that help them get back on their feet. Those experiences include both the public sector safety net (e.g. programs like food stamps, Medicaid) and private sector products (e.g. check cashers, payday lenders).

At Propel, we believe that tech hasn’t pulled its weight in solving real social problems. While tech alone won’t solve poverty, it can play a much larger role in building safety net services that restore financial health.

We believe that the best way to change the system for low-income Americans is to build a thriving business that aligns our incentives: a system where our business grows if and only if we help more low-income Americans improve their financial health.

Our values

• Listen first: We approach our work with humility and the acknowledgement that there's a lot we don't know. We don't pity or look down on low-income families - instead, we take inspiration from their resilience and ensure that they have a seat at the table.

• We're doers, not philosophers: We have a bias towards action. Though we may design with an ideal world in mind, we release for the world we live in - and we ship and iterate relentlessly.

• Embrace a growth mindset: The problems we need to solve tomorrow will be different from the ones we solved yesterday. We approach our work with a desire to learn and improve every day.

• Light up at our mission: All of us at Propel have a strong sense of duty and responsibility to execute on this mission and succeed on behalf of our users.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity

At Propel, JEDI represents our constant striving towards equality both internally and externally. Internally, we focus on DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusivity. Externally, we focus on justice: dismantling systemic racism, discrimination, and economic injustices with the products that we build.

We focus on JEDI because it drives us towards the best product and business decisions that allow us to effectively and consciously serve our mission and our users. As a social enterprise, we also recognize that caring about JEDI is quite simply the right thing to do.

The people that use our products are diverse in many ways - gender, age, race, sexual orientation, religion, disability status, and more. We explicitly aim to reflect that with our team composition, though we aren’t there yet. That’s why we are actively working to make sure our job descriptions are inclusive, our sourcing nets are widely cast, and our interview process is equitable and fair to all.

We particularly value those with lived experiences around financial hardship and safety net programs. While people from all backgrounds can contribute to Propel’s mission, we know that those who come from the communities we serve have an incredibly powerful and unique perspective.