Aren Inan
Aren Inan is a senior at Bergen County Technical High School in Teterboro, studying Financial Technology and ranked seventh in New Jersey. He serves as Chief Financial Officer and co-founder of Futures Financials, joining as a founding officer when the organization began in 2022. Aren helped build the organization's financial literacy curriculum from the ground up, and today Futures Financials has reached more than 10,000 students across 30 or more schools and libraries nationwide, with a 95 percent improvement in financial literacy shown through structured pre- and post-assessments. He also co-founded the Financial Literacy for Youth Initiative, an effort that grew out of his work with Futures Financials and is now expanding to chapters across five countries, extending financial education to students well beyond the communities Futures Financials already reaches.
Aren's work has been recognized nationally. He is a Penn Early Exploration Program Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and a FinMango Global Ambassador, selected as one of 12 global ambassadors chosen from more than 400 applicants worldwide. He placed in the top ten of 500 statewide competitors in the Junior Achievement Titan Challenge. Beyond the classroom, Aren helped conduct the New Jersey Financial Student Readiness Audit alongside State Senator Vin Gopal and Professor John Longo, a diagnostic study on financial literacy gaps among New Jersey students, and has attended hearings in support of New Jersey Bill S3462. He also serves as Vice President of the New Jersey Juniors' Chapter of the Society for Orphaned Armenian Relief, where fundraising and outreach support Armenian youth and orphanages worldwide, work that reflects the same instinct to help people who are often overlooked.
Aren's commitment to financial literacy comes from lived experience. Growing up in an Armenian immigrant household, he often served as the bridge between his family and the systems around them, translating paperwork and helping navigate situations most kids never have to think about. He saw firsthand how a lack of financial knowledge, not a lack of effort, can limit what a family is able to build, and that gap is what he set out to close through Futures Financials, giving other students the language around money his own family had to learn the hard way.
