On July 7, 2026, Hunter Williamson stood on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York City’s Financial District.
Broker booths lined the perimeter walls, staffed by employees of brokerage firms executing orders for institutional clients. Trading posts for designated market makers, who maintain an orderly market in the specific stocks assigned to them, stood in the center of the room. The NYSE floor was relatively quiet, due to the technology that’s largely taken the place of the hurried masses who in decades past worked there. But periodically Williamson noted a casino-like “ka-ching” or cat meow from an individual booth, signaling a completed trade.
At 4 p.m. Williamson heard the famed sound of the NYSE closing bell rung by Brendan McCarthy, global head of exchange-traded fund distribution at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, marking the end of the trading day.
Williamson, a College of Education student from Midland, Texas, was among a group of 100 participants in the 2026 NYSE NextGen Bootcamp. On July 7-8, students from numerous colleges and universities, who had been nominated for the opportunity by CEOs, gained insights into leadership, innovation and the global capital markets, including that visit to the NYSE trading floor.
As a rising sophomore in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, Wiliamson viewed the bootcamp as an opportunity to connect his studies with his broader interests in finance and law. As a Physical Culture and Sports major, with hopes of getting into the Sport Management program, I’m really interested in the business side of sports,
Williamson says. I’m also interested in law, policy and how it’s all related.
At this point, any opportunity I have to learn, I’m taking it,” he says, “The NYSE opportunity falls into that category.
As part of that opportunity, bootcamp attendees engaged in interactive forums with speakers and executive leadership from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE)—which digitizes the energy markets and provides greater price transparency—and the NYSE. Students attended seminars on capital markets, trading strategies and emerging technologies, and they gained valuable industry knowledge and career advice from speakers including NYSE President Lynn Martin, NYSE Head of U.S. Listings Tara Dziedzic and ICE Fixed Income and Data Services President Chris Edmonds. For their active participation and program achievement, the students earned a certificate of graduation.
Experiential learning opportunities like this illustrate the wide array of possibilities available to College of Education students,
says Victor Saenz, COE’s associate dean for student success, community engagement and administration. Hunter’s experience shows how students in our college can connect their academic preparation with interests in fields such as finance and law as they explore distinctive professional pathways.
Among the bootcamp’s speakers, Best Buy Co. Inc. CEO Corie Barry described her professional advancement, which involved repeatedly seeking new and increasingly challenging roles. That made an impression on Williamson. One thing that really stuck with me: You need to be willing to learn how to do what no one else is willing to do, because that’ll get you noticed,
he says. Williamson recalls how Barry told the students she would earn a new job, then see an open role no one else wanted, and ask her managers if she could have it. And then a couple of years later, she’d get a promotion and do the exact same thing,
Williamson says. Barry gained knowledge from each of her various roles, which she could then apply.
It’s advice Williamson will hold onto.
Employers notice people who say, ‘I want to take the harder job, apply myself and learn how to do it.’ That shows a person is’s willing to learn,
says Williamson. At the end of the day, it’s about how you apply yourself to everything.
