NYIF keeps fostering business leaders regardless of their backgrounds, ethnicities, and gender over 3 decades. Famous alumni include Travers J. Bell Jr., the founder and owner of the only black-owned member firm of the New York Stock Exchange. He was also regarded as the “father of the modern minority-owned investment bank” by Investment Dealers Digest (a full-service multimedia financial publishing, database, software, and consulting company founded in 1935) in 1999. According to The Afro American in 1984, Bell received his education at Washington University and the New York Institute of Finance.