The eight-week course that replaces the family phone call about work
Byron V. Garrett, chief executive of the national nonprofit Genesys Works, runs an eight-week summer program teaching underserved high schoolers email etiquette, Excel, critical thinking and AI fact-checking before paid corporate internships at partners including Accenture, JPMorgan and Mayo Clinic. Founded in 2002, the organization has served more than 14,000 students, placing 2,161 teenagers in 2025 across 205 corporate partners and 27 industries.
Garrett frames the gap not as talent but as access to counsel: many participants cannot call a mother or aunt about a problem at work, because nobody in the household has faced one. The program substitutes structured coaching for that missing voice, and the arithmetic follows. Alumni seven or more years out average $67,000 a year, against $56,153 for comparable recent graduates per 2026 Clever data.
Source: Fortune · September 27, 2026