Ava McDonald is the 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 on the 2020 Ad Age 40 Under 40 list, Ava has become one of her generation’s strongest and most inspiring entrepreneurial voices and has served as a Generation Z consultant to a number of companies, including Unilever. Her company has been adopted as a case study at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin to inspire future entrepreneurs. 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 the 2021 Harvard University 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. In addition, Ava volunteers her time to numerous non-profit organizations to serve as a mentor to young female entrepreneurs.