Alexa Tobel

Education

Harvard College; Harvard University.

Career

Von Tobel is the author of the New York Times bestseller Financially Fearless, which debuted on December 31, 2013. Originally from Florida, Von Tobel received an Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Harvard College. After graduation, she worked as a trader at Morgan Stanley before leaving to be the Head of Business Development at Drop.io.

Von Tobel came up with the idea for LearnVest in 2006 while working at Morgan Stanley when she realized she and most other people had never had any formal education about how to manage their personal finances.

In April 2009, Von Tobel closed a $4.5 million series A round of funding led by Accel Partners. To date, Learnvest has raised outside equity of $72 million, from investors including Accel Partners, AmericanExpress Ventures and Northwestern Mutual Capital.

On March 25, 2015, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, based in Milwaukee, announced it would acquire LearnVest. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

The deal has been viewed as the latest attempt by traditional financial-services firms to adapt to new digital technologies.

Northwestern Mutual expects the technology will encourage more adviser-client interaction and ultimately create a more rewarding experience for the customer and adviser. By adding LearnVest’s technology to the insurer’s existing planning platform, those advisers can devote more time to working with customers on carrying out their recommendations. The arrangement also puts customers in more frequent contact with those advisers.

Von Tobel has been included in lists like Business Insider’s 2010 "Silicon Alley 100," Incorporated.

Achievements

• Von Tobel has been included in lists like Business Insider’s 2010 "Silicon Alley 100," Incorporated. Magazine’s "30 under 30: The Top Young Entrepreneurs of 2010," “Women to Watch” by Forbes, “18 Women Changing the World” in Marie Claire, and BusinessWeek’s annual list of “Best Young Technical Entrepreneurs.” In 2012, she was selected as a Fortune "Most Powerful Women Entrepreneur" and named a scholar at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Von Tobel has been featured in publications including: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fast Company, Forbes, Shape Magazine Marie Claire, The Huffington Post, Mashable, TechCrunch, and more. Von Tobel has also appeared on several local and national televisions shows including: The Today Show, Good Morning America, Columbia Broadcasting System This Morning, Cable News Network Newsroom, Anderson, Katie Couric, The Rachel Ray Show, The Nate Berkus Show, Bloomberg, Consumer News and Business Channel Power Pitch, Microsoft and National Broadcasting Company Your Business, National Broadcasting Company 4 New York and several others Von Tobel has been a featured speaker at several conferences and events such as the 2012 SXSW Interactive, TEDxWallStreet Event at New York Stock Exchange, Stern Entrepreneurs Exchange Summit 2012, Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Marie Claire Celebrate Female Entrepreneurs: Women in Business Speaker Series, Fortune Summit: Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, The George Washington University 5th Annual Women in Business Conference, and Incorporated.’s GrowCo Conference in 2013. Von Tobel hosted the first live event for the website, LearnVest Live, in October 2012, featuring lectures by fashion designer Cynthia Rowley, Top Chef judge Gail Simmons, Marie Claire editor and Project Runway mentor Joanna Coles, Gilt Groupe cofounder Alexandra Wilkis, and one of LearnVest’s Certified Financial Planner professionals and their Director of Financial Planning, Stephany Kirkpatrick.

Membership

In April 2014, von Tobel was selected as an inaugural member of the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship, alongside Steve Case, Reid Hoffman, Tory Burch and others