Spon­sors for Edu­ca­tional Oppor­tu­nity (SEO) was founded in 1963 with a mis­sion to pro­vide aca­d­e­mic enrich­ment and career devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties to tal­ented young peo­ple from under­served and under­rep­re­sented communities.

SEO SCHOLARS
SEO Schol­ars is a rig­or­ous year-round, out-of-school aca­d­e­mic pro­gram that pre­pares moti­vated low-income pub­lic high school stu­dents to get to and through America’s com­pet­i­tive col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. The pro­gram serves 400 high school stu­dents in New York and San Fran­cisco in addi­tion to 212 col­lege stu­dents across the coun­try. The pro­gram is free for stu­dents and has tripled in size since 2006.

SEO CAREER
SEO Career recruits and trains out­stand­ing col­lege stu­dents of color for sum­mer intern­ships that lead to full-time jobs with invest­ment banks, cor­po­rate law firms and other lead­ing global com­pa­nies. His­tor­i­cally, more than 75% of interns receive full-time job offers from SEO cor­po­rate part­ners. Over the past two years, SEO has pro­vided more than 600 intern­ships with more than 50 cor­po­rate and non­profit partners.

SEO ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS
SEO Alter­na­tive Invest­ments pro­vides edu­ca­tion, expo­sure, train­ing and men­tor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to tal­ented pro­fes­sion­als tra­di­tion­ally under-represented in the alter­na­tive invest­ments sec­tor. Key com­po­nents of the pro­gram include the annual SEO Alter­na­tive Invest­ments Con­fer­ence and a ten-month Fel­low­ship Pro­gram (AIFP) that com­bines train­ing and men­tor­ing for posi­tions in pri­vate equity and other alter­na­tive investments.

SEO ALUMNI
SEO is an alumni-driven orga­ni­za­tion. Once a stu­dent is accepted into SEO, s/he becomes a mem­ber of a net­work of highly suc­cess­ful lead­ers. Our alumni are well-represented as lead­ers in vir­tu­ally every imag­in­able pro­fes­sion, and are all com­mit­ted to using their suc­cess to cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for the next gen­ER­a­tion. In fact, alumni lead­ER­ship has spurred the cre­ation of three inter­na­tional affil­i­ates: SEO Lon­don, SEO China and SEO Viet­nam. Com­bined with these inter­na­tional pro­grams, the global SEO alumni net­work num­bers more than 8,000 and rep­re­sents 46 U.S. states and 45 coun­tries. We sup­port their ongo­ing pro­fes­sional and lead­ER­ship devel­op­ment via panel dis­cus­sions, net­work­ing events, vir­tual resources and vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties.