Sales & Relationship Academy - Scholar Program

Department: Talent Acquisition
- College Program

Location: Chicago,IL

At Greenwood Project, we open doors in financial services for undergraduate freshmen. We give our scholars three things: social capital, the network that comes from knowing people inside the industry. Academic and technical capital, the training the work actually requires. And aspirational capital, the belief that the seat belongs to you.

This is not a workshop series. Scholars commit to twelve months of training, deliver real work on real deadlines, and finish knowing whether this industry is for them. Many go on to internships and full time offers at our partner firms. All of them leave with a network they did not have before.

This academy trains institutional sales and relationship management. Over twelve months you will learn how financial products work, and how to build relationships.

• Institutional sales. Selling investment products and ideas to large organizations such as pension funds, asset managers, and corporations, rather than to individual consumers. The twelve months are built around this.
• Relationship management and client coverage. Owning the ongoing relationship with a client, understanding their business, and being the person they call first.

• Capital markets sales. Working with clients on stock and bond issuance, hedging, and market access.
• Wealth management and private client. Advising individuals and families on how their money is invested. This is the largest employer of client facing talent in the industry and a common first seat.
• Client service and business development. Supporting existing relationships and opening new ones.

Read that split carefully. The first two are what we teach. The rest are real places scholars land, and this training is the right foundation for them. But if you want a client facing job without learning the products underneath it, this is the wrong academy.

We are recruiting 100 scholars into the Sales & Relationship Academy for the 2029 cohort. Across all three Greenwood academies we will select 325.

You are eligible if you are currently a freshman graduating in 2030. We call this the 2029 cohort because Summer 2029 is the internship you are working toward.

• October 2026 to June 2027 Rolling admissions. Decisions every month. November is the priority round.
• July 2027 Academy begins.
• July 2027 to June 2028 Twelve months of training, from the summer after freshman year through your sophomore year.
• Fall 2028 Junior year internship recruiting season. Greenwood supports you through interviews.
• Summer 2029 The goal: a 10 week internship with a partner firm, the summer after your junior year.
• Spring 2030 You graduate.

We review applications and make decisions every month from October 2026 through June 2027. You will hear back within 4 weeks of the round your application lands in. Seats fill as we go, so the earliest rounds have the most of them open. Apply early.

You submit one application for this cohort. Not one per academy, and not one per round. Our Talent & Recruitment team may move you to a different academy than the one you selected if your answers point somewhere else, so you do not need to get that choice perfect.

• Accepted. You are in.
• Deferred. We want to see more before we decide, usually your next term of grades. Your application carries forward automatically and you do not need to submit anything new. You will hear from us about two weeks before the next round of decisions, and again every month until we decide. You will not sit in silence.
• Decline…