World Trade Center Institute 

From his office in the tallest pentagonal building in the world, Eddie Resende ’05 looks out over the Inner Harbor to the world beyond. As CEO of the World Trade Center Institute, he’s responsible for helping bring business “from the world to Maryland and Maryland to the world.” Resende began working at the Baltimore-based institute, one of the biggest in the World Trade Centers Association of more than 320 around the globe, as an intern when he was an undergraduate at TU.

After graduating with a business administration degree, he joined full time and has never looked back. “Trade touches everyone,” he says. “I love working with companies that are facing different challenges and determining how we as an organization can help them solve those problems.”

Trade touches everyone. I love working with companies that are facing different challenges and determining how we as an organization can help them solve those problems.

Eddie Resende

Clockwise: (1) Resende outside the World Trade Center Institute in Baltimore. (2) The view from Resende's office. (3) Various country flags hanging in the lobby of the institute.

Over the years TU has served as a pipeline to fill many of the organization’s positions, Resende says. Working with area college students is a core part of its mission.

...not only are students learning but they’re identifying opportunities so that when they graduate, they have a network that they can reach out to for corporate positions.

Eddie Resende

“We’ve become a center where business leaders, students and college professors come for connections between education and resources,” he says. “We’ve had a long history of partnering with TU and the universities around the state. In many of these educational programs, not only are students learning but they’re identifying opportunities so that when they graduate, they have a network that they can reach out to for corporate positions.”

Among the institute’s programs is the Albrecht Fellowship for College, in which 25 to 30 students from Maryland-based universities work inside multinational corporations for two weeks to learn about the products that they make and the international business landscape.

“It’s extremely successful,” Resende says. “It was created with the intention of retaining talent locally. This is one of many opportunities for TU students to build their network and their CVs.”