By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams and City University of New York Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez on Monday announced a nearly $12 million expansion towards the CUNY Inclusive Economy Initiative, which leverages CUNY campus resources to create college-to-career pipelines for CUNY students.
To date, the initiative — which first launched in 2022 — has served over 3,100 students and worked with more than 2,000 industry partners, advancing the city’s goal to connect 80 percent of CUNY graduates with careers following graduation by 2030. The $11.8 million expansion — comprised of a $4.8 million investment in the Fiscal Year 2025 Executive Budget and $7 million from private partners, including Blackstone Charitable Foundation, Bank of New York Mellon Foundation, Centerbridge, Bloomberg LP, and Goldman Sachs — will bring industry engagement, career advising, internship, and full-time opportunities to an additional 1,200 students annually across over 20 new academic departments.
The CUNY Inclusive Economy Initiative is designed to bolster student career outcomes by creating connections with employers, and providing students with hybrid academic and career advisors to ensure they have the support needed to achieve their academic goals and professional aspirations. The initiative currently serves 17 departments across nine campuses on sectors ranging from tech to health care and to the green economy. Today’s new investment will expand departments and offerings, growing the capacity of colleges to prepare students for these in-demand fields and others. The CUNY Inclusive Economy Initiative will also support CUNY students in entrepreneurial and innovation skill-building by folding in the Blackstone LaunchPad program and its over 100 paid internship opportunities.
As part of this expansion, the initiative will begin offering students career opportunities in the financial industry for the first time by incorporating CUNY Futures in Finance. Launched in 2021 in collaboration with Centerbridge Partners, Bloomberg LP, and Goldman Sachs, Futures in Finance has exposed over 3,000 students at Brooklyn College, City College, and Lehman College to opportunities in the financial sector. As part of CUNY Inclusive Economy, Futures in Finance will continue to provide talented CUNY students with training, mentorship, and access to the financial services industry.
Additional enhancements to the CUNY Inclusive Economy Initiative include:
- Expanding CUNY’s groundbreaking Degree-to-Career Mapping program to create employee connections that best match student interests and integrate career milestones directly into academic degree maps.
- Offering stronger academic advising with career coaching that aligns classroom learning with career readiness exercises and employer-vetted skills, ensuring students are better prepared to enter the workforce.
- Engaging more faculty by embedding industry specialists into an academic department faculty that will receive current and real-time industry insights via the industry specialist, which ensures they can best prepare students.
- Simplifying navigation by making it easier for industry partners to connect both to the industry specialists on campuses and the Industry Support Hub.
“Our city’s future depends on being able to help our young people to grow, fulfill their potential, and thrive in an ever-changing economy — and that means investing in the future of CUNY students,” Adams said. “In our first year, we launched the CUNY Inclusive Economy Initiative to prepare young people for the economy of tomorrow by investing in them today. Now, we are building on that success with a near-$12 million expansion that will serve 1,200 additional students. Today’s investment and what we have done over the last two years by building equitable career pathways is about sending a clear message to our young people: New York City is still the place where anything is possible.”
