Structured Finance Foundation Establishes Scholarship Fund at the University of the District of Columbia

The Structured Finance Foundation, an affiliate of the Structured Finance Association (SFA), today announced it has established a fund to provide scholarships to eligible students attending the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) who are pursuing an undergraduate or graduate finance, accounting, or economics degree in the School of Business and Public Administration. The Structured Finance Foundation scholarship will be established with a gift of $80,000, with the first scholarship to be awarded for the Fall 2021 semester. The foundation will award two need and merit-based scholarships of up to $10,000 each.

“Our foundation is intently focused on helping build a financial services industry that looks more like the people it serves, and that starts by recruiting and supporting a diverse group of promising students,” said Leslie Sack, Executive Director of the Structured Finance Foundation. “By entering into this partnership with the University of the District of Columbia, we will provide opportunities for the next generation of leaders and continue to move the needle toward a more diverse and inclusive industry.”

“We are excited to enter into a partnership with the University of the District of Columbia and are eager to ease the burden of some of its most promising students with an interest in our industry,” said Gregg Silver, Chairman of the Structured Finance Foundation Board of Directors. “Our foundation will continue to look for additional ways to make a difference in the lives of students, including through mentorship and full-time paid internship opportunities.”

“We are delighted to have the support and sponsorship of SFA for our students,” said Alex Tan, Ph.D., Chairperson of the Department of Accounting and Finance in the School of Business and Public Administration at UDC. “This will be a great gift and wonderful benefit to our students.” he added. “We envision that our partnership with SFA will continue to grow and strengthen further in upcoming years.”

SFA is in concurrent discussions with UDC regarding non-financial partnerships, including curriculum input, educational briefings, job search support, informal mentorship opportunities, and full-time paid summer internships. In recent years, SFA has launched a series of initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion in the securitization industry. In January of this year, SFA launched a racial diversity initiative with the goal of ensuring the participation of minorities in the industry, and all of the keynote speakers at the organization’s annual conference in February were women or minorities. In 2014, SFA launched its Women in Securitization (WiS) initiative to support the retention and advancement of women in the structured finance industry.