Wharton@Work

December 2025 | 

Leadership Legacy: Securities Industry Institute at 75

Leadership Legacy: Securities Industry Institute at 75

When a program lasts 75 years, longevity alone isn’t the story. The real achievement is remaining indispensable.

That’s the distinction of the Securities Industry Institute (SII), the long-standing collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). Since its founding in 1951, the Institute has shaped generations of financial leaders, uniting academic rigor with real-world insight in ways few programs can match.

A Collaboration Uniting Research and Practice

Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel calls the program “revolutionary. The SII, we believe, is the longest-running collaboration in the world between an academic institution and an industry association, in large part because it created a new kind of professional education, one grounded in research but focused squarely on practice.”

Siegel first lectured at SII in 1978 and later served as its academic director for three decades, helping the program evolve alongside the field of finance itself. “From the very beginning, the principles founded in academia shaped the advice given by the financial industry,” he says. But the partnership also created a two-way dialogue: “The concerns of practitioners guided our research, and our results guided their recommendations. That interaction helped transform both academia and the industry,” he adds.

Relevant and Rigorous

That dual focus on relevance and rigor continues today. Peter Conti-Brown, Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor and SII’s newest faculty advisor, describes the Institute as “an experiment every single year.” He and his colleagues pore over participant feedback to refine the mix of courses and instructors. “We filter off what didn’t land and bring in new ideas,” he says. “The goal is to enrich the professional and intellectual experience — and that means finding the right cadence between rigor and relevance.”

That relentless experimentation has kept the program full to capacity, with more than 300 new first-year participants enrolling annually and an alumni network that spans every major firm in the industry. Participants choose from more than 200 sessions covering everything from digital assets and geopolitics to behavioral ethics and artificial intelligence. But the structure remains faithful to its roots: three years, one week each March, on Wharton’s campus.

Tom Gooley, chief operating officer of Cetera Financial Group, experienced that evolution firsthand, starting as a participant and then returning to lead a session before becoming an SII trustee. “The program allows you to broaden your perspective no matter your role,” he says. “It helps you work better with others, develop leadership skills, and understand where the industry is going so you can set a longer-term direction for yourself and your organization.”

Conti-Brown sees the program’s content as a balancing act. “You have to avoid being overly technical while also steering clear of turning the material into pure entertainment,” he says. “Getting that balance right requires constant experimentation.”

Reflection and Renewal

For Siegel, the enduring success of the Institute lies not in constant change but in its capacity for reflection. “Finance is one of the youngest fields in business and academics,” he says. “It began with anecdotes but became rigorous through data, theory, and constant testing. The SII program gave the industry a place to pause, learn, and absorb those advances together.”

That tradition of reflection and renewal continues to define the Institute today. “Most of us spend our days in a frenzy,” Conti-Brown observes. “SII offers a week of reflective learning, a chance to make sense of complexity, to put your phone down and engage deeply with people who’ve had incredible personal and professional experiences. It’s intellectually enlivening but also spiritually renewing.”

But the learning doesn’t just elevate those who attend. “If your firm isn’t participating,” Gooley says, “push for it. It’s not just about personal development. It’s about strengthening the entire industry.”

As Wharton and SIFMA prepare to mark the 75th anniversary of the Securities Industry Institute in 2026, Siegel’s influence still echoes through every lecture and conversation. His vision of bridging theory and practice remains the Institute’s heartbeat — and its promise for the next generation of financial leaders.