The artworks are diversity-themed and are overseen by Benyamin Ahmed, the 13-year old creator of Weird Whales, and other NFT collections that have generated $20 million in sales.

The NFTs will form WIF’s Alpha Collection - where each of the 88 NFTs are available for $50,000 (equivalent in ETH) on the Ethereum blockchain. WIF commissioned Massai, a black artist from Brazil, to create space and diversity and inclusion themed digital artwork (artworks available to view here). The token itself doubles as a membership to the WIF community.

WIF offers students, graduates and young people looking to transition into fintech and web3, access to work experience and internship programmes (1-6 week courses), as well as access to coaches and mentors. Proceeds of the NFT will be used to build a blockchain based gamified and tokenised learning, training and mentoring platform where on-chain credentials can be used as proof-of-work. WIF will use blockchain public ledgers to clearly show how the proceeds of the raise will be allocated in the interests of transparency and accountability. The proceeds will fund work experience programmes, internships and careers fairs in 2022 and 2023.

Matthew Cheung, co-founder of Work in Fintech, said: “Fintech is a vibrant and exciting industry, but has historically been hard to access for candidates of certain social and ethnic backgrounds. We want to change this, not only giving these candidates a helping hand into the industry but highlighting opportunities that they may not have known existed and inspiring the next generation of fintech and web3 professionals. Our NFT launch is the first of its kind targeting companies and represents a new form of corporate sponsorship - allowing organisations involved in our community to support our programmes and tangibly increase diversity and inclusion.”

Ying Cao, co-founder of Work in Fintech, said: “Workplace diversity is incredibly important, not only in improving working culture but creating opportunity, bringing new ideas and driving performance. Our proposition to partners and investors is not only asking for their financial support, but to join a community which is looking to transform our industry for the better, by offering mentorship and opportunities for diverse candidates.”

The NFTs have already generated strong corporate interest, with sponsors and partners including Adaptive Financial Consulting, Blockchain.com, ipushpull and one of the world’s leading inter-dealer brokers. NFT holders will be offered a close collaboration with WIF, with tailored work experience days, inclusion in WIF career fairs, leadership training for staff and opening up a diverse talent funnel.

The NFTs will be launched on June 20th at NFT.NYC, the New York annual NFT industry event.