As Black Business Month is recognized each August, Free Money Meister demonstrates how Black women entrepreneurs are using technology to address persistent financial and educational inequities.

Founded by Kiara Scott, Free Money Meister is a Black woman-owned, AI-powered scholarship platform designed to help students find, prioritize and apply for college funding with less confusion and greater success. The platform replaces the overwhelming experience of searching outdated scholarship databases with a more organized and personalized approach.

Free Money Meister identifies high-quality, often-overlooked scholarship opportunities and guides students toward the funding options that offer the greatest potential based on their individual profiles. The platform is designed to help students manage deadlines, organize application materials and approach scholarships as part of a clear financial strategy.

Scott created the company after successfully developing her own system for funding her education.

“I started Free Money Meister because I funded five years of higher education, earned two degrees, and graduated with $0 in student loan debt by mastering scholarships, grants, fellowships, and paydown programs—and I realized it wasn’t luck,” Scott said. “It was a repeatable system.”

After initially teaching that system through workshops and individual coaching, Scott recognized that technology could make the process available to more students and families.

“Once I saw scholarships as a process, I knew I could teach it—but more importantly, I could build it into software so it scales beyond one-on-one coaching,” she said.

Before transitioning Free Money Meister into a Software as a Service (SaS) platform, Scott coached hundreds of students through workshops and one-on-one support. During the company’s minimum viable product phase, participating students collectively secured more than $500,000 in scholarship funding.

One of Scott’s earliest clients, Brooke Foyles, worked with her from high school through college. Foyles earned more than $48,000 through at least 21 scholarships and graduated debt-free with a nursing degree. Scott’s younger sister also completed her high school program and began college without student loan debt.

Those outcomes demonstrate Free Money Meister’s potential impact, particularly for students from families that may not have access to private college consultants or extensive financial-aid guidance.

“This problem hits underrepresented communities harder—especially Black families—because student debt and the wealth gap compound across generations,” Scott said. “I built FMM to reduce that burden by helping families convert existing scholarship dollars into real outcomes.”

Free Money Meister has also gained recognition within Baltimore’s entrepreneurial community. Scott earned first place in the Greater Baltimore Urban League’s Pitch Competition, where she presented the company’s technology, business model and potential to help more students reduce their dependence on student loans.

Following that victory, Scott recently represented Baltimore in the National Urban League’s Pitch Competition, bringing Free Money Meister’s mission and growing impact to a national audience. The opportunity allowed her to showcase the company alongside entrepreneurs from Urban League affiliates across the country while highlighting Baltimore’s expanding community of innovative Black-owned businesses.

The local and national recognition reflects the company’s momentum as Scott works to expand the platform and make scholarship assistance available to more families.

Her long-term goal is to transform scholarship searches from an exhausting guessing game into a practical, data-driven funding strategy.

“My goal is to make scholarships feel less like a guessing game and more like a clear, data-driven funding strategy families can actually execute,” Scott said.

Free Money Meister is initially proving its model in Maryland, where families can benefit from guided access to local scholarships that are frequently overlooked by larger databases. Scott ultimately plans to scale the platform nationally so more students can avoid unnecessary debt.

As a Black woman-owned education technology company, Free Money Meister represents the innovation, resilience and economic impact celebrated during Black Business Month. By combining technology, financial empowerment and lived experience, Scott is building a platform that helps students spend less time searching for financial aid and more time preparing to succeed in college.