Kiana Danial teaches us where to put our money and how to make it grow. As the CEO of Invest Diva, Kiana brings us a financial movement built with women in mind. After overcoming many personal hardships and experiencing a successful dive into trading, Kiana was motivated to move forward into investing. Commentator, speaker and internationally known personal investing and wealth management expert, Kiana educates and empowers women to grow their money and build the wealth they dream of. She believes that with knowledge, we can watch our fortunes rise and become a driving force in inspiring other women to do the same.
FWM: Kiana, I am honored to interview you! Please introduce yourself to our readers.
KD: My name is Kiana Danial, and I am an award-winning, internationally recognized personal investing and wealth management expert. I’m best known as CEO of Invest Diva, my women-focused financial movement which empowers women to take control of their financial future and put their money to work by investing in online assets. It’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all investment strategy, and one for which I’ve won multiple awards!
I was born and raised in Iran as a Jewish minority during the Iran/Iraq war. My father, a successful engineer and CEO of a construction company, lost everything to the new Iranian regime. The government took over all of his assets and froze his bank account, and I grew up with very little. At 18, I was encouraged to follow in my father’s footsteps and accepted an engineering scholarship. However, the scholarship was in Japan and I didn’t know any Japanese, I wound up being the only female in my classes, and I quickly learned I sucked at math. Suffice to say, I was quite miserable.
It was in Japan that I got my first taste of investing and trading in the form of Forex, and my first trade yielded me a massive return. I was hooked and came to the United States to work on Wall Street. However, I quickly discovered how shady things were, how often the retail traders fall victim, and how there was a huge absence of female traders. I decided I was going to cause a change and made a very passionate presentation to my Wall Street boss about changes I thought would make trading, investing, and Wall Street better for everyone… and I ended up getting fired. I was pretty heartbroken.
Instead of giving up, I decided to reeducate and reinvent myself. I read every financial book and looked into every financial resource I could, including the Certified Financial Planning (CFP) program, the Charted Market Technician (CMT) program, and many more. It was out of this research that I formed Invest Diva, which allowed me to empower women financially by training them to become their own money managers instead of needing to pay anyone a fee to take control of their financial future.
Today, the Invest Diva Movement is growing fast with over 800 students worldwide. I’ve had the honor to be featured in TIME Magazine, Fox Business, CNNi, Forbes, TheStreet, Nasdaq, Cheddar, and many others. I’m happily married, and balance running the Invest Diva Movement with being a stay-at-home mom to my beautiful 2-year-old daughter!
FWM: How were you introduced to investing? What was your first investment?
KD: I was first introduced to investing in 2008 in Japan. There was a massive global recession and the markets crashed. At the time I didn’t know a single thing about the economy or finance, but all I could hear was that the U.S. Dollar was getting cheaper and cheaper. That’s when I had an idea: maybe I could buy some U.S. dollars at a cheap price? I could even keep it until it gets expensive again and exchange it back to Japanese Yen! I was talking about this with my Japanese host family mom, and she started telling me about how I could actually take advantage of the situation and make money during the crashing market. She opened an account for me, and I transferred $10,000 worth of Japanese yen to a broker in August 2008. Within a month, I doubled my money!
This was absolutely shocking to me as someone who had never traded before and completely sucked at math. This was my first ever investment and I made $10,000 within a month in a CRASHING market. That success was enough for me to ditch my engineering degree, start investing, and then make my way into personal finance.
FWM: What keeps you motivated?
KD: What I learned during my time on Wall Street and knowing the financial industry could be a win-win situation for everyone, not just for brokers and fat cats. And really causing young women to become passionate about empowering themselves around finances and investing. I recently had a fourteen-year-old girl thank me and tell me she and her mom watch my videos. I was so moved, because that’s exactly why I created Invest Diva – to empower women to take control of their financial future, both this generation of women as well as the next.
FWM: What advice would you give a young woman just starting out in investing?
KD: When it comes to investing, two pieces of advice:
1- Get educated.
2- Don’t give in to FOMO!
While you don’t have to be a math whiz in order to take control of your financial future and grow your wealth by investing, you first do need to understand the basics and do your due-diligence. Once you have personally taken charge of your financial plan and understand your risk tolerance, then it’s much easier to avoid the market noise that can only cause you emotional stress, and in many cases, cause you to make decisions that are not aligned to your long-term goals.
FWM: Here in the 21st Century, do you feel that more women are gravitating towards investing?
KD: I still think the boys on Wall Street like to make it seem like they know more and know better. And people definitely get intimidated by that. But I certainly am seeing the wave of change with all the women who are taking control of their family’s financials and rocking the investing world.
I’m seeing more women starting to realize that it is wiser and more empowering to be in charge of their financial future instead of just assuming their husband (or someone else) is going to take care of them. I’m not saying you can’t do that – I have no problem with my husband paying for things. But it is a myth to think that you can leave your financial future 100% in someone else’s hands, as the average age for widowhood in the US is only 59.
FWM: How do you feel your business is empowering women and your community?
KD: By showing that women can not only invest successfully but can actually be more profitable than their male counterparts even if they’re not a math whiz, don’t want to take too much risk, and are super busy juggling life and kids.
You don’t have to be a math whiz, because I and my students aren’t. You don’t have to dedicate hours upon hours in order to invest successfully, because I and my students don’t. Most importantly, we empower women by showing that investing doesn’t have to be extraordinarily complicated, daunting or overwhelming, but can actually be… (gasp)… fun!
And when you are with like-minded women who are all learning together like we have at the Invest Diva Movement, you feel that supportive sense of community that I so felt was lacking back when I was on Wall Street. What a tremendous difference it makes to a beginner’s success when they feel supported!
FWM: How can our readers connect with you outside of this interview?
KD: I’ve put together a free masterclass for those who are ready to take action and start taking control of their financial future. You can access the on-demand training here: https://learn.investdiva.com/yes. I’m also on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, but I’m an officially a TikTok addict. Come say hi to me!
Follow Kiana on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook at Investdiva and Twitter and Tik Tok @kianadanial.
Kiana Danial- Kiana Danial, CEO of Invest Diva (www.investdiva.com), is an award-winning, internationally recognized personal investing and wealth management expert. Having been featured in The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, Fox Business, CNNi, Forbes, TheStreet, Nasdaq, Cheddar, 77 WABC Radio and 710 WOR Radio, Kiana is a highly sought-after commentator, professional speaker and executive coach who delivers inspirational workshops and seminars to corporations, universities and entrepreneurial groups. Kiana has reported on the financial markets directly from the floor of NYSE and NASDAQ, and was named the Personal Investment Expert of the Year in 2018 and the Investment Coach of the Year in 2019 by the Investment Fund Awards. An accomplished author, Kiana’s books include ‘Invest Diva’s Guide to Making Money in Forex’, published by McGraw-Hill in 2013, and ‘Cryptocurrency Investing for Dummies’, published by Wiley in 2019. Invest Diva’s mission is to empower and educate women to take control of their financial future by investing in stocks and other online assets.
Photos courtesy of Film Fam, LLC and Karen Morneau Photography
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