Ruta Rackauskyte was 18 when she started studying at ELATT. Prior to this, Ruta was a waitress in a cafe of a London university and uncertain of her future. Without the required industry standard qualifications and experience, Ruta’s opportunities to find work were limited, but she wanted to find a way of improving her life and fulfilling her aspiration of becoming a professional designer. At ELATT, Ruta became digitally literate and gained new technical skills. Her enthusiasm and achievements were recognised and tutors quickly saw that Ruta was an ideal candidate for ELATT’s apprenticeship programme with Morgan Stanley.

In March 2013, Ruta began working as an apprentice at Morgan Stanley, while receiving design and IT training at ELATT one day a week. After successfully completing her apprenticeship, Ruta was offered a permanent role as a visual designer at Morgan Stanley. Ruta says: “ELATT accepted me and taught me valuable technical skills. This has led me to get an amazing job at Morgan Stanley. My life has been transformed. I didn’t know what I was going to do before this apprenticeship, now I have a much brighter future ahead where I can fulfil my ambitions. I recommend this apprenticeship scheme to anyone I meet who is struggling to find work or direction in their lives. Learning on the job at Morgan Stanley has given me purpose, confidence, experience and new expertise and I am not scared of what the future brings anymore. Now I have this opportunity, I just want to learn more and more to keep improving my skills and knowledge. I love my job and my Mum is so proud of me!”

With almost a million young people still looking for work in the UK, ELATT strives to unlock the great potential of young people like Ruta, and our apprenticeship programme with Morgan Stanley is the perfect example of how young lives can be transformed and how businesses can grow their own talent.