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Next Gen IT: Inspiring the Future Workforce

By Frank La Salla, DTCC President & CEO | 3 Minute Read | September 21, 2022

When you think about the most pressing challenges facing financial services, talent remains at the top of the list – specifically, retaining and recruiting people for roles in cybersecurity, technology and innovation. While there are no easy answers, we know that the longer-term strategy must include actively developing the next generation of engineers and IT professionals and establishing relationships before they enter the workforce.

Success in this area demands more than spending money—it requires collaboration, sharing expertise and dedicating time—and DTCC is committed to this approach. Just last week, we announced a new five-year partnership with the NYU Tandon School of Engineering to build capabilities for its Center for Cybersecurity. Given DTCC’s role in protecting the stability of the global financial markets, and our extensive work with the industry on this topic, we’re very excited to work with this important institution to help educate future leaders in cybersecurity and resilience. Our partnership is focusing on research, education and workforce development, and dissemination and outreach because we’ll need the best people to combat cybercriminals as the volume and intensity of attacks increase globally.

“We’re committed to building more bridges in the future, and confident that our work with these groups will provide an important foundation for future IT, computer science and cybersecurity professionals.”

But cybersecurity is only one of the critical functions we have to address. We also need engineers and innovators to help drive the digital transformation of our industry. We’re making inroads here as well through our partnership with Duke University Pratt School of Engineering. This past summer, 21 Duke interns completed a program to work with our Internal Technology Research and Innovation team, which researches and experiments with new and novel ideas. 

These examples are far from unusual at our firm. DTCC has a long history of giving back to help train future IT professionals, and we’ve dovetailed that work to promote and advance diversity and inclusion. The most successful companies reflect the communities where they live and work, and we’ve embraced that mindset by encouraging young women and students of color to explore STEM careers. For instance, we’ve seen enormous benefits from supporting initiatives like Computer Science for Cyber Security at NYU Tandon, our sponsorship of the Girls Who Code (GWC) program for high school students, as well as our program in Chennai, India, in collaboration with Loyola-ICAM College of Engineering and Technology, which focuses on women computer science students. The work is ongoing, and I’m pleased to say we’ve hired one of our NYU interns for a full-time role, and one full-time employee and two interns from the GWC program.

We’re committed to building more bridges in the future, and confident that our work with these groups will provide an important foundation for future IT, computer science and cybersecurity professionals. While we’d love to see all of them at DTCC, it’s enough to know that we’re helping to open a world of new possibilities for students.



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Frank La Salla

DTCC President, CEO & Director

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