| Birth Name: | Theodore Gonder |
| Birth Date: | 4 January 1990 |
| Birth Place: | La Crescenta, CA |
| Nationality: | American |
| Alma Mater: | University of Chicago |
| Occupation: | CEO and Co-Founder, Moneythink |
Ted Gonder (born January 4, 1990) is an American entrepreneur and the co-founding CEO of Moneythink, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building the financial capability of young adults through technology-enhanced peer mentorship. Until July 2015, he was also a member of the U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans.
After seeing Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth and attending the 2006 Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Foundation Seminar, Gonder launched Project Cooldown, a nonprofit that brought climate change awareness campaigns to high schools across his native California.[1] In 2007, The Climate Project, an organization founded by Gore, appointed Gonder as a student advisor.[2]
Gonder earned a BA in Geography from the University of Chicago. As a student at the university, he co-founded Moneythink as a service learning club. Gonder also founded the University of Chicago Entrepreneurship Society (now called Edge UChicago).
In 2008, Gonder, Shashin Chokshi, David Chen, and Greg Nance established the “American Investment Fellows” club at the University of Chicago based on Nance’s idea to send students from the university’s investment club into local high schools to teach workshops. After the success of a pilot program at the South Shore School of Leadership, the initiative began to spread to campuses across the country. In 2009, the organization was officially rebranded as Moneythink, at which point Morgan Hartley joined as the organization’s fifth co-founder.
In 2011, Gonder interned at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, where he researched the relationship between government and startups in Chile.[3] After completing his assignment in Chile and returning to the U.S. later that year, he decided to pursue Moneythink as a full-time venture.
In 2012, Gonder spoke on behalf of Moneythink when it was named a White House Champion of Change, and declared that the organization’s goal was to make youth financial capability a social norm in the U.S. by 2030.[4] [5] He also became the organization’s first executive director.