Today we’d like to introduce you to Cindy Chavez Swenson.
Hi Cindy , we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My story really starts on a couch. My husband and I were talking about money one night, and I mentioned how my mom used to run tandas, rotating savings circles where women in her community pooled their money together every month. He’d never heard of it. His reaction was: “That’s genius. Someone needs to make an app for this.” And something in me whispered, maybe that someone is me.
That was 2015. I tucked it away. But it never left me.
Fast forward to 2023. I was a college professor and I’d just gone through three rounds of interviews for a promotion (with a $50,000 raise!) and two weeks before my start date, I got a text pulling the offer. No call. A text. That was the moment everything shifted. I stopped waiting for institutions to validate my worth and decided to bet on myself.
I grew up watching my mom and the women around her build financial safety nets out of trust and community, not banks, not apps, just each other. And I knew that tradition deserved better infrastructure. So I built it.
R.O.S.C.A. sits at the intersection of everything I am a daughter of Mexican immigrants, an educator, and someone who believes deeply that financial freedom isn’t just for people who already have access.
Our communities have always found ways to pull through. I’m just digitizing what we’ve always known how to do.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Smooth? Absolutely not. But I wouldn’t change it.
At the moment I decided to build R.O.S.C.A., something in me just became fearless. I had just been professionally humiliated by an institution I gave everything to, and I realized, no one was betting on me. So I had to bet on myself. And once I made that decision, I also made peace with the fact that I could figure anything out. I didn’t need permission. I just needed to move.
But the hard truth is that being a Latina solo-founder in the fintech space is lonely in ways I didn’t fully anticipate….
There are only four of us in the USA. Four. Which means there aren’t a lot of benchmarks to follow, no roadmap to look at, no one who’s done exactly what I’m doing that I can call and say “did this happen to you too?” Every ceiling I hit, I’m often the first one hitting it. And breaking glass ceilings sounds empowering, and it is, but I’ve metaphorically broken my hands and my spirit more times than I can count. There were moments I didn’t know if I could keep going. But nothing worthwhile is ever easy, and I’ve never been someone who stops at hard.
The solopreneur life has taught me something though. It’s a lot like a tanda. You can’t do it alone. You build a circle of trusted people (attorneys, CPAs, developers, advisors, copy editors, brand and website designer, marketing folks, community members, believers) and you keep building. You show up every round, even when it’s hard, because that’s how the pot grows. That’s how it works.
The road hasn’t been smooth. But the road has been mine. And that makes all the difference.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about R.O.S.C.A. Money Circle?
R.O.S.C.A. is an app that digitizes tandas, the community savings circles that have existed in Latino, African, Asian, and Indigenous communities for generations.
We take an age-old tradition built on trust and turn it into a seamless, modern experience. No charge. No fees. All our products and resources are free.
Members create their circle, invite people they trust, set their contribution amount and schedule, and the app handles everything else, payment tracking, reminders, accountability, and transparency. No spreadsheets. No chasing people down. No mental load.
But what sets us apart isn’t the technology. It’s the heart behind it.
The market opportunity is real and it is massive. There are 68 million Latinos in the U.S., including those from the Caribbean, Central and South America, and tens of millions of them participate in money circles regularly.
When we apply the 31% participation rate documented by cultural anthropologist Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez of Arizona State University, the first scholar to critically study tandas, to the U.S. Latino population alone, that’s approximately 21 million people.
And that’s a conservative number.
Expand that to include Caribbean communities running sociedades or susus, South American communities running juntas, and Central American communities running cundinas, and the number climbs significantly higher.
The individual circles may seem small, averaging around $2,400 per circle, but when you multiply that across the full Latino market, you’re looking at approximately $10 billion moving through informal savings circles every single year. Informally. Without infrastructure. Without protection.
That’s the gap R.O.S.C.A. was built to fill.
Most fintech companies build for communities that already have financial access. We build for the ones who were left out of that conversation entirely.
R.O.S.C.A. was designed specifically with the Latine community in mind, our language, our culture, our financial wounds, and our financial wisdom…
Because here’s what most people overlook: our communities have been practicing rotating savings for centuries. We didn’t need to be taught how to save. We needed the infrastructure to do it better.
What I’m most proud of, brand wise, is that R.O.S.C.A. feels like home.
The name itself holds three layers: a U.S. banking term (roscas), a global financial practice mostly run by women, and the Rosca de Reyes, the circular bread we share on Three Kings Day. Our circular branding, our imagery, our voice, all of it was intentional. When someone from our community sees R.O.S.C.A., I want them to feel seen before they’ve even downloaded the app.
Right now, the app is in an active update phase. We’ve listened closely to our community (really listened!) and we’re streamlining the experience based on what our users actually need. Something important to understand about where we are today: R.O.S.C.A. is a social app, not a money movement app. The trust, the circle, the community, that’s what we’re building first. Money coordination currently happens outside the app, and intentionally so. Because we are a new startup, our priority is to build something our community can trust deeply before we ever touch their transactions.
Looking ahead, we have two partnerships we’re actively working toward. The first is WhatsApp, because that’s already where our community lives and communicates. Meeting people where they are isn’t just a strategy, it’s a value.
The second is a banking partnership, which will allow us to eventually offer safe, regulated, and fully transparent money movement directly within the app. We’re building the relationship before we build the infrastructure because that’s actually how tandas have always worked.
And beyond the app, we’re building something equally important: a community of informed, financially empowered Latines. Our newsletter, Metiche, is where that lives. It’s grown into a go-to resource covering everything from how tandas work, to business tips, personal finance, and financial education, all written straight from me, the founder, in a voice that feels like a conversation with your most financially savvy friend. No jargon. No gatekeeping. Just real talk about building wealth on our own terms.
R.O.S.C.A. also offers scholarships supporting the next generation of leaders — our last two recipients were female STEM students-of-color from SDSU and UCLA.
What I want your readers to know is this: R.O.S.C.A. isn’t a product trying to enter a culture. It is the culture. And that’s something no one else can replicate.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Honestly? I don’t believe in luck. I believe in action.
What some people might call luck, I call preparation meeting opportunity. And what some might call bad luck, I call redirection. The moment that changed everything for me (losing that job offer two weeks before my start date) could have broken me. And for a moment, it did. But I didn’t sit in it. I moved.
I think the danger of believing in luck is that it takes the power out of your hands. If good things happen because you were lucky, then you’re always waiting, waiting for the right moment, the right person, the right circumstances to align. I’ve never had the luxury of waiting. And honestly, that’s been my greatest advantage.
Every door that closed pushed me to build my own. Every person who underestimated me became fuel. Every “no” sharpened my vision. None of that is luck, that’s just what happens when you refuse to stop moving.
R.O.S.C.A. wasn’t born from luck. It was born from a conversation, a decade of sitting on an idea, a painful professional betrayal, and a decision to bet on myself when no one else would. That’s not luck. That’s action, repeated, even when it’s terrifying.
Pricing:
- https://www.roscamoneycircle.com/
- https://newsletter-rosca.beehiiv.com/
- https://roscamoneycircle.myshopify.com/
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.roscamoneycircle.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roscamoneycircle/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557083114601
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindy-chavez-swenson/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@roscamoneycircle
Image Credits
Bilboard: https://www.outfront.com
Bilboard & Marketing Designer: https://www.instagram.com/xo_xochitl_c/
Marketing support: https://www.instagram.com/missgirlpina/
Website & Brand Design: https://monforte.studio/
Copy Editor: https://www.oxfordcomma.co/
Brand Photography: https://www.mariacamilaphoto.me/
Newsletter design: https://thriveletter.studio/
