SEO Schools Programme

SEO was originally founded in 1963 as one of New York’s first mentoring programmes for high school students. The aim was to provide personal and educational development for students from minority ethnic groups by means of sustained support and coaching. In 1980, SEO established a Career Programme on Wall Street to provide summer internship opportunities to university students in investment banking.

In London, SEO was established in February 2000 as a careers programme to increase diversity in the investment banking industry. The alumni of SEO London now has more than 800 members and one of the most recent alumni-led initiatives is the SEO Schools Programme. This programme aims to increase awareness and aspirations of high school students in and around London and we are currently working with a number of schools in our pilot programme including:

• Christ the King Sixth Form College
• Ernest Bevin College
• Holloway School
• Notre Dame RC Girls School
• Richard Hale School

In our pilot programme, we aim to hold talks for high school students on the investment banking industry and different roles within an investment bank. SEO Alumni who are able to attend will be talking about their backgrounds, how they got into banking and their current roles. We also hope to run more interactive sessions when we can take questions, do role play and give students better awareness of “a typical banking day” and the working culture.

We are also working with Excell3 and Queen Mary University on separate high schools awareness and mentoring initiatives.