Citi plays Cupid for university talent search
If I were to say to you, “can you keep a secret?”; Would you know just what to do or where to keep it?
Shoot that fintech arrow to my heart! Citi Ventures is hunting out young talent with the launch of its Citi University Partnerships in Innovation and Discovery (Cupid).
This new programme engages and embeds students from universities in innovation efforts across Citi. Currently, more than 80 students from 12 US universities are receiving course credit for their work in semester-long projects focused on emerging technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, and big data analytics.
Cupid isn’t stupid and uses talent from beyond business graduate programmes to include individuals studying design, engineering and public policy.
Vanessa Colella, head of Citi Ventures and Citi’s chief innovation officer, says the “energy and creativity of the students is palpable, and it’s been incredible to work alongside them”.
The students are matched based on their interest and skill set with internal Citi initiatives including projects within Citi’s D10X programme, which lets employees take new business ideas from concept to launch.
It says it has more than 200 employee founders working on nearly 100 internal D10X start-up ideas, and over 1,500 employees have been involved in D10X since it was introduced two years ago by Citi Ventures.
Participating universities include Cornell Tech, Columbia University Business School, Georgetown University, NYU Stern School of Business, NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Parsons School of Design at The New School University, The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and University of Texas at Austin.
According to Citi, Cupid builds on existing efforts including hackathons and design sprints to create, test and prototype new ideas.
Since the start of this work in early 2017, it says more than 200 university students from 16 different universities in the US, UK and Canada have participated in some element of innovation work through Cupid.
Citi Ventures is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in San Francisco, New York, London and Tel Aviv.
