From High School to the Working World: Genesys Works and CME Group Foundation

CME Group Foundation has supported Genesys Works Chicago since 2017, giving a total of $375,000 as part of the Foundation’s College and Career Success and K-12 Education portfolios. As a result of this support, CME Group – one of Genesys Works’s 245 corporate partners nationwide – has hosted over 80 Genesys Works interns since 2015.

Since 2002, Genesys Works has empowered thousands of high school students in eight cities across the U.S. The organization’s Chicago site opened in 2010 with a cohort of 19 high school students and has now infused over $17 million in Chicago communities through internships and early career opportunities. In 2023, Genesys Works Chicago served 465 unique students with 31,000 hours of professional training.

Genesys Works introduces high school students to tech-based career pathways through four steps:

• Seven weeks of paid summer training in professional development and business technology
• A yearlong internship at a partner company site
• Over 60 hours of guidance, counseling and planning including college applications, certification training and financial aid assistance
• Postsecondary community mentoring and support

CME Group intern Richard Ramirez joined Genesys Works after hearing an in-person presentation at his high school. He credits his marketing analytics internship with planting the seeds for his future.

“Before I started, I didn’t know what marketing was,” says Ramirez, who now has a second CME internship in IT. “I learned that pulling analytics for marketing managers isn’t just about handing them data or statistics. Marketing managers aren’t just looking for the analytics, for numbers or graphs, they want a story, a narrative. Thanks to this opportunity, I realized this is what I wanted to study.” Once Ramirez graduates college, he says, “I would love to continue to be part of CME as a marketing analyst and continue to work alongside the team and the department that supported me every day.”

Somya Bhagwagar is a Marketing Analyst at CME and served as Ramirez’s Genesys Works supervisor. She speaks highly of Ramirez and her experience managing a Genesys Works intern.

“His work ethic was so strong that he was able to pick up information extraordinarily quickly,” says Bhagwagar about working with Ramirez. “He picked up technical skills and was able to produce reports and insights for our Marketing team; and [he] gained soft skills in learning how to communicate, problem solve and lead.”

Bhagwager saw herself as a mentor to Ramirez as well as a manager. “I wanted him to get exposure to different aspects of the company and encouraged him to spend time outside of his immediate projects to do so,” she says. “My goal was to show him real-world corporate experiences, yet give him the space and protection to make mistakes and learn.”

"The CME Group Foundation is proud of our role in supporting Genesys Works,” says Foundation Executive Director Eva Giglio. “We align on the mission of Genesys Works to provide opportunities for internships, networking and authentic company engagements for high school students."