Meet Jasper Gould and Emile Chilingirian: the two Brooklyn teens who created a Gen Z financial newsletter for nearly 60,000 subscribers while running a student investment group | World news
Jasper Gould and Emile Chilingirian are juniors at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, but much of their time outside of class is spent on projects that look more like a small financial media company than a typical high school activity. The two founded Brooklyn Youth Charitable Investment Group in September 2024, a student-run organization designed to teach high school students about finance while giving them experience managing real investments and directing returns toward charitable causes. Together with BYCIG, they created Passing the Torch, a finance and economics newsletter that has grown to about 57,000 subscribers, according to Gould, and its readers include professionals from major financial and technology companies. The publication describes itself as a youth-focused source of analysis covering markets, economics, politics and culture. What began as two teenagers exploring their interest in finance has since grown into a major media operation with readership extending far beyond their school community.
According to the newsletter’s own About page, Passing the Torch describes itself as a publication that covers markets, economics, politics and culture, with an emphasis on investigations written for a younger audience. The publication’s own pages currently give conflicting figures about how often it publishes: its About page says it produces 72 issues a year, while its home page says it publishes more than 200 times a year and dozens of times a month. Since both figures appear on the newsletter’s own website, the exact current publication frequency cannot be established from those pages alone. Gould has said he began learning about finance and investing independently as early as sixth grade, while Chilingirian joined him to develop the newsletter into a broader project aimed at connecting young people’s perspectives with the financial world.
The newsletter works in conjunction with the couple’s other major project, the Brooklyn Youth Charitable Investment Group (BYCIG), a student-run organization focused on financial education, investing, and philanthropy. The group’s public pages currently contain conflicting information about its tax status: some describe BYCIG as a 501(c)(3) public charity, while other pages indicate that the organization was still seeking or awaiting that status. Therefore, the safest formulation is to describe BYCIG as a student-run nonprofit initiative rather than declaring its tax-exempt status as an independently established fact.The organization says it has grown to more than 1,000 members and its investment portfolio increased more than 25 percent during its first year. These figures are provided by the organization itself and should not be presented as independently audited results. BYCIG says investment returns are directed to charitable causes selected by its members, combining financial education with a philanthropic and investment component.
The newsletter has also reported a readership approaching 60,000 subscribers, although this figure, like membership and portfolio growth statistics, is better attributed to the publication than presented as independently verified. Gould and Chilingirian have also developed other social media projects around finance, expanding their reach beyond the newsletter itself.Together, the projects show how two high school students have built a surprisingly extensive educational and financial means operation before entering college. But the most surprising part may be the audience they’re trying to reach: Their newsletter explicitly positions itself as made by young people and read by Wall Street, putting teens in the unusual position of producing financial commentary for both their peers and people already working in the industry.
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