The SEO Story

Opening Doors to Success

Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) London is a not-for-profit organisation that every year provides hundreds of outstanding undergraduates from under-represented ethnic minority backgrounds the unique opportunity to gain exposure to some of the most prestigious graduate employers in the UK, including many of the very best firms in investment banking, management consulting, corporate law, professional services, technology, advertising, marketing and communications.  Opportunities are available for students in every year of study, from internships to full time graduate roles.

SEO London also provides undergraduates with extensive training, mentoring and networking, linking students not only to the firms that they work with but also to opportunities and experienced professionals throughout their industries of interest. By doing so, SEO London equally supports both the diversity recruitment goals of our partner firms and also helps to serve those communities that have been most excluded from the industries mentioned above.  As an alumni driven programme, SEO London seeks to develop a new generation of leaders that will inspire and give back to members of their community to raise their aspirations and in time ensure that the most prestigious industries are also the most inclusive.

In summer 2011 SEO London supported more than 520 Black and other minority ethnic (‘BME’) students to secure placements and/or graduate positions with more than 30 partner firms.  These firms include the elite from all of the previously mentioned industries – Accenture, Ashurst, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, Berwin Leighton Paisner, Citi, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Factset, Freshfields, Goldman Sachs, Herbert Smith, IPA, HSBC, Jones Day, J.P. Morgan, KPMG, Latham & Watkins, Linklaters, Macquarie, Macfarlanes, Mayer Brown, Morgan Stanley, Nomura,  Novartis, Norton Rose, Procter & Gamble, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Simmons & Simmons, Weil Gotshal, Winston & Strawn.

In 2012 SEO London will offer more than 750 internships and graduate opportunities with more than 35 partner firms.

SEO London also now works to address some of the underlying factors impacting the under-representation of certain communities in the industries we cover, in particular academic attainment.  SEO’s Scholars programme seeks to utilise the 1,850+ alumni of our career programme and the support of our corporate partners and leading universities to help more secondary school students from under privileged backgrounds achieve their academic and career goals.  This support takes the form of both an in-school education programme and also out of school mentoring, training and exposure to leading universities and elite professions.

How We Started

SEO stands for Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and was originally founded in 1963 as one of New York’s first mentoring programmes for underprivileged high school students. Its aim was to provide personal and educational development for students from minority ethnic groups by means of sustained support and coaching.

In 1980, SEO New York established a Career Programme on Wall Street to provide summer internship opportunities to university students in investment banking. Subsequent internship programmes have been developed in management consulting, corporate law, accounting and technology.  Additionally the programme has expanded geographically in the US and Asia but most successfully in the UK.

SEO London was founded in February 2000 by alumni of the US programme working for investment banks in the City of London.  In the last eleven years the programme has grown hugely - more than 1,850 students have secured internships with leading graduate employers through SEO London, with over 80% of SEO interns converting their summer internship experience into a full-time position with a sponsor firm.