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 undergraduate students from under-represented ethnic minority backgrounds the unique opportunity to gain summer internships at some of the most prestigious investment banks and corporate law firms in the UK.

SEO London also provides students with extensive training, mentoring and networking, linking students not only to the firms that they work with, but to opportunities and experienced professionals throughout the entire financial services industry. By doing so, SEO London equally serves the diversity recruitment policies of its sponsor firms, as well as trains a future generation of business and community leaders.

In 2007 more than 80% of SEO interns received full time graduate job offers from partner firms after their internships, a success rate which is significantly higher than the industry average. SEO grooms its interns to excel in the workplace and become leaders in their communities who will give back and forge a path to success for the next generation. In 2008 SEO provided more than 220 placements with all of the major investment banks and most of the major corporate law firms in the City.

As a direct result of the SEO Internship Programme and the high performance of its interns, SEO has significantly increased the number of ethnic minorities employed in investment banks in the City.

How We Started

SEO was originally founded in 1963 as one of New York’s first mentoring programmes for 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.

SEO has also expanded geographically to San Francisco, Chicago, Hong Kong and London.

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 eight years the programme has grown hugely -more than 800 students have interned through SEO London, with over 80% of SEO interns converting their summer internship experience into a full-time position with a sponsor firm.