Casey Ariel Thobias has a deep passion for educating emerging leaders in the principles of business finance. Casey graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in Corporate Finance from the University of South Carolina. She is the Founder and CEO of Blaze Group, a financial education and consulting firm closing gender and racial wealth gaps in entrepreneurship.

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Casey Ariel started her career working within the Chief Financial Officer division of Bank of America at their Charlotte headquarters. She skillfully worked across the disciplines of global liquidity risk management, interest rate risk management, and enterprise stress testing before joining the Global Corporate & Investment Banking division to structure multi-billion dollar loans for utility companies. Casey relocated from the Charlotte office to the San Francisco office where she structured deals for large technology companies. 

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Due to Casey Ariel's extraordinary skill in education and mentorship, she served as the core credit risk program instructor for global hires of Bank of America's Global Wholesale Credit division - training incoming credit analysts from the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, and beyond. 

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Upon leaving Corporate America to embark on entrepreneurship, Casey Ariel offered global management consulting services. Notably, she served as the fractional Chief Credit Officer of Hello Tractor, Inc. - designing a first-of-its-kind tractor financing solution and deploying more than $10MM in capital to un-/underbanked entrepreneurs across Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya. Today, Casey Ariel proudly serves on the Advisory Board of Kiva US.