Jeff Aronson has been hiring CUNY students since 2018 and can speak to the benefits of tapping CUNY’s deep pool of talent.
“We love working with CUNY students. They are smart. They are hardworking. And most importantly, they have grit,” says Aronson, the co-founder and managing principal of the investment firm Centerbridge Partners. He describes the partnership with CUNY as “a win-win.”
That spirit is at the heart of Power Your Business with CUNY, our new campaign to help employers have easier access to hire our amazing students and partner with CUNY. It features success stories from Aronson and other industry leaders like John Waldron, president and COO at Goldman Sachs, and Jocelyn Weyrauch, senior manager of HR at TD Bank, each highlighting the value their companies gain from their relationship with CUNY.
The campaign points employers to our Industry Support Hub, a central conduit that helps businesses hire students, build internship programs, collaborate with faculty and utilize our campus facilities.
This work complements and supports CUNY Beyond, our university-wide initiative to foster career readiness. Launched in the fall, CUNY Beyond is all about preparing students for what comes next. Power Your Business with CUNY brings employers into that journey, connecting classroom learning to workplace opportunity.
Making Connections Easier
CUNY is a major pipeline to all sectors of the city’s workforce and our students are actively recruited by more than 30,000 employers. But with 26 campuses and hundreds of thousands of students, faculty and grads, many businesses looking to draw on CUNY talent may not always know how to find our front door. That’s why our focus now is on making connections easier and more direct.
Over the past year, the Industry Support Hub engaged hundreds of new employers, resulting in more than 1,000 internships, part-time and full-time jobs and other career exposures. An AI hackathon with IBM drew 75 students and a waitlist of more than 300, underscoring the demand for industry-connected opportunities. A recruitment event organized with Queens nonprofit New York Edge resulted in 93% of interviewed students receiving job offers.
We are working to grow those numbers by making more employers aware of the dedicated support system that exists to connect them with the students who can best meet their needs.
These include one-on-one relationships with faculty and industry specialists in growth sectors like business and finance, healthcare, clean energy and tech. And we know the Industry Support Hub is working; employers consistently tell us how much these relationships mean.
“It’s so helpful to have one go-to person I can reach out to and say, ‘Hey, I need help with this. What do you think?’ It’s an incredible resource,” said Sammy Lazoja, CEO of Live Wire Electric on Staten Island, who credits the CUNY industry specialist he has worked with and says, “I honestly feel like she’s part of my team.”
At its core, providing dedicated industry support is about everything that makes CUNY the engine of opportunity it is: lowering barriers and opening doors by helping employers see CUNY as a civic partner. And we are already seeing the benefits of this work.
“The Industry Support Hub helps you navigate the CUNYverse,” said Adelia Rattray, the chief of staff and senior project manager at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. “Whether you’re looking for top student talent, building a sustainable pipeline from a degree program, or exploring apprenticeships — there’s someone at CUNY who can help.”
Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university system in the United States.
