Candidly’s Laurel Taylor Named to Inc. 2025 Female Founders List

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Candidly, the market’s only AI-driven student debt and savings optimization platform, announced today that its Founder and CEO, Laurel Taylor, has been named to Inc.’s Female Founders list for 2025.

Taylor’s journey to founding Candidly began with her own experience accumulating student debt. The financial burden forced Taylor and her mother to forgo a combined two decades’ worth of wealth-building opportunities. Since founding Candidly in 2016, Taylor has helmed its mission to close the most critical and prevalent gaps in financial wellness by creating employee benefits solutions that empower workers to make simultaneous progress on paying down debt while building wellness and wealth.

"Being named to Inc.'s Female Founders 500 reinforces what drives our impact at Candidly – the power of building from lived experience. Having carried six figures of student debt myself, I understand firsthand the weight of indebtedness that millions face daily. This recognition celebrates not just my journey but our team's relentless pursuit of transforming financial futures through AI-powered solutions that make the complex simple. We're not just building technology. We're creating pathways from debt to wealth for hardworking Americans of all ages and wages, with urgency and purpose."

Under Taylor’s leadership, Candidly has forged distribution partnerships with financial industry giants, including Guild, Hub, Empower, Intellicents, Lincoln Financial Group, PNC, Vanguard, and several others (not yet announced), secured the support of tier-one institutional investors (including a $20.5 million Series B financing round), and demonstrated its impact through organizational achievements including:

• Enabling its users to generate $1.8 billion in projected student debt impact
• Reducing the likelihood of employee turnover by 58% through its Student Loan Employer Contribution solution
• Increasing first-time retirement plan participation by 13.5% through its Student Loan Retirement Match solution

This year marks Inc.’s eighth edition of its Female Founders list, which analyzes criteria including funding, revenue, and stories of impact to honor women entrepreneurs whose innovations and ideas are leading their industries forward.

To see the complete list of honorees, please visit: https://www.inc.com/female-founders

About Candidly

Candidly is an AI-driven student debt and savings optimization platform that addresses the full lifecycle of education expenses and empowers people to make simultaneous progress on paying down student debt and building wealth. Candidly partners with leading employers and financial services companies serving the workplace like 401(k) and 403(b) recordkeepers, retirement plan advisors, and more, creating a holistic and inclusive workplace benefit and embedded finance solution.

Candidly is backed by leading venture capital and strategic investors including Aflac, Altos Ventures, Breton Capital, Cercano Management, Impact Engine, Rethink Impact, Salesforce Ventures, UBS, and Unum. For more information, visit www.getcandidly.com.