Prestigious Seal/Crest/Coat of Arms

AKAMAI Finance Academy

The AKAMAI Finance Academy (AFA) is a part of the non-profit AKAMAI Foundation which seeks to help Hawaii's graduates compete for careers in the high finance industry. The AFA provides practical, hands on training to students from their senior year of high school through graduation from any of Hawaii's business colleges. Of 13,000+ Hawaii high school graduates each year, the AFA selects 30 students for this free program. Comparable week long programs on Wall Street can cost over $10,000.

Funding is mostly out of pocket by volunteers, but small federal grants have been used to pay for curriculum creation. We do what we do because we believe that there are students in Hawaii that are as smart as those who attend mainland U.S. colleges. Hawaii graduates should not be discriminated against when applying for a job just because they were not fortunate enough to attend a college on the U.S. mainland.

We focus as much of our efforts on low-income communities and persons, but are not restricted to that. Any student that is interested in learning is encouraged to apply. We believe that this program has huge socio-economic impacts. By taking young people out of bad situations and placing them in a nurturing learning environment they will be able to lift themselves up along with their communities.

The target audience would range from high school students to business professionals on Wall Street. We would like something that students would be proud to show on their clothes. We would also like the logo to exude exclusivity, prestigious-ness, and professionalism. Hawaiian themed elements are also helpful to distinguish us from any other institution in the U.S. For some examples of what we are looking for, please see http://www.andover.edu.

Professional, prestigious, exclusive looking. Please see http://www.andover.edu for one example of a professional seal. We are looking to put words like "AKAMAI Finance Academy" as the name of the institution, "Ma Ka Hana Ka Ike" as the motto. It would also be good if we can have "AKAMAI Foundation" on there somewhere to denote the parent organization which administers the AKAMAI Finance Academy.

Please also visit http://www.akamaiinitiative.org for more information about our organization. You will see on this page a graphic of the Hawaiian Island chain. This may/may not be incorporated into the logo, we currently use this graphic on our other marketing materials. We just want some kind of Hawaiian tie-in.

Also, when we talk about the high finance industry, it means hedge funds, investment banking, and asset management. These are the pinnacle of the finance industry, the hardest to get jobs, the highest paying jobs. We want students to feel proud to be apart of the AFA, that they have done well to get here, and with our help they will continue to grow and succeed. Think of other prestigious institutions like Harvard, Princeton, MIT, etc.