Ava McDonald is the 19-year-old founder and CEO of Zfluence and a freshman at Georgetown University. Ava founded Zfluence in March 2019 to address the lack of authenticity and effectiveness in “pay-to-say” influencer marketing and to empower her generation to take a more active and positive role in the $20 billion social media economy.

The youngest honoree and only member of Generation Z on the 2020 Ad Age 40 Under 40 list, Ava has become one of her generation’s strongest and most inspiring entrepreneurial voices. In addition to running Zfluence, she has served as a Generation Z consultant to a number of companies, including Unilever, and her company has been adopted as a case study in the MBA curriculum at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin to inspire future entrepreneurs. Ava has also been featured in Forbes and WIRED, among other media outlets, for her work at Zfluence and her Generation Z expertise.

Ava speaks regularly about teenage entrepreneurship and its role as an empowering force for young women, a topic about which she is passionate. Ava will be speaking at Harvard University in 2021 at their annual Women in Business Conference, has been invited to give a TEDx talk, and has served on panels alongside executives from McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Bain & Company, Google, and Amazon. Ava also regularly volunteers her time to numerous non-profit organizations to serve as a mentor to young female entrepreneurs.