Founder & CEO, PoolUp
Mercedes Robinson is a founder and operator building at the intersection of behavioral finance, technology, and access.
Born and raised in Inkster, Michigan, just outside Detroit, Mercedes grew up understanding firsthand how proximity to opportunity shapes outcomes. That perspective has guided her career — from education leadership to venture-backed fintech.
She holds a B.S. from Grand Valley State University, an M.A. in TESOL from The City College of New York, and an Ed.M. in Public School Building Leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University. Since 2016, she has worked across New York City schools in both instructional and leadership roles, focusing on systems-level equity and institutional change.
While working in public education, Mercedes witnessed stark disparities in access to technology and economic mobility — gaps that widened dramatically during the pandemic. Rather than accept those constraints, she built infrastructure to address them.
She founded TEquity in Action, a nonprofit that delivers coding, AI, and web design education to students of color. Designed for sustainability from the start, the program serves over 400 students across Newark and Medellín, Colombia, operating without outside funding through a leverage-based teaching model she engineered.
Today, Mercedes is the Founder & CEO of PoolUp, a fintech platform reimagining how people save together. PoolUp transforms group chats into structured saving systems — applying behavioral science, social accountability, and cultural money habits to help communities build wealth collectively.
Her work sits at the intersection of systems design and access: building infrastructure that closes gaps rather than working around them.