Inside SII: 75 Years of Shaping the Future of Financial Services Leadership

The Securities Industry Institute (SII) is a partnership between SIFMA and The Wharton School. Since 1951, it has served as a “leadership lab” for the next generation of executives.

As we prepare to welcome this year’s cohort for Institute Week, from March 8-13, this post shares an inside look at the SII experience and how it continues to be as impactful as ever.

Participant View: Sharpening Mindsets and Building Connections

“For me, it was about investing not just in further developing my skill set, but it was really about investing in my mindset. It’s made me a better leader. It’s made me a better colleague.” —Dipti Kachru, Global Chief Marketing Officer of Broadridge and 2025 SII Graduate.

Beyond business skills, SII offers participants the opportunity to:

• Focus on personal introspection and leadership resilience to better support their teams through industry transitions.
• Immerse themselves in a diverse cohort, building a “brain trust” of peers, a career-long resource across functions—including tech, trading, operations, and marketing—to benchmark best practices and solve challenges through sharing experiences.
• Set goals for their SII journey: absorb core content, connect the dots to their specific role, and expand their mindset by taking classes on topics outside of their expertise.

Trustee View: Evolving Alongside Global Shifts

Featuring world-class Wharton faculty and leading industry experts, SII explores complex topics in an academic setting—including critical thinking, behavioral finance, and leadership psychology—and pairs it with practical industry applications, so each participant can share those lessons with their team and firm.

Joe Colaizzo, BetaNXT’s Head of Operations as a Service, 2011 SII graduate and current SII trustee, notes the program’s strategic evolution, “as a first-year student at SII in 2009, the focus was on products and risk. Today, the classes focus on AI and emerging technologies alongside core disciplines in ethics, scenario planning, and market dynamics.”

Leadership View: Investing in Talent, Investing in the Firm

Firm leadership sees SII as more than a professional development course; it is part of a talent strategy to engage rising leaders and align their path with the firm’s long-term goals.

By selecting an employee for this three-year journey, a firm is investing in its future as it invests in its rising leaders. Key to that success includes:

• Collaborating effectively: Leading across different generations and departments.
• Strengthening communication: Mastering productive feedback.
• Thinking strategically: Navigating complex changes, looking ahead, and seeking innovation.

For Jim Deutsch, Smith Moore’s President and Chief Executive Office, 2015 SII Graduate and Member of SIFMA’s Board of Directors, the power of the SII program is the pause it provides participants to “reflect on what you just heard, discuss it with peers, and identify practical insights or a different lens that you can bring back to your firm.”

SII marks its 75th year in 2026 and its mission remains simple: to help rising leaders move from preparing for change to driving it.