Before They Even Graduate High School, This Program Is Preparing Underserved Teens for Corporate America

The debate over whether Gen Z workers are equipped for today’s professional environment has largely played out in opinion columns and LinkedIn threads. But inside a classroom in one of nine U.S. cities, a different conversation is happening—one that focuses on what it takes to close the gap before young people ever reach a job application.

Genesys Works, a national nonprofit headquartered in the Midwest, has spent more than two decades placing underserved high school students into paid corporate internships. Since its founding in 2002, the organization has worked with over 14,000 young people across the country, and in 2025 alone, it helped 2,161 teenagers begin their professional journeys.

What sets Genesys apart from typical career-readiness programs is both its duration and its intensity. Each summer before students enter their senior year, they undergo an eight-week training program that goes well beyond standard resume workshops. Participants receive instruction in critical thinking, logic, reasoning, digital literacy, spreadsheet proficiency, and the unspoken rules of professional conduct—everything from email etiquette to how to conduct oneself in a meeting.

Byron V. Garrett, the organization’s CEO, has a straightforward explanation for why this kind of preparation matters so deeply. “Oftentimes our young professionals don’t come from backgrounds where folks call their mom or aunt and say, ‘Hey, I ran into this problem at work. What do I do?'” Garrett told Fortune. “They don’t know anyone who actually has done that before.”

That absence of a professional network is not a minor detail. Research consistently shows that access to mentorship and workplace familiarity plays a disproportionate role in career mobility. Students from lower-income households are far less likely to have relatives or family friends who can walk them through office norms, negotiate a starting salary, or even explain what a performance review entails. Genesys attempts to fill that structural void.

The curriculum has also evolved to address the tools shaping the modern workplace. While today’s teenagers are often described as digital natives, Garrett argues there is a meaningful difference between navigating social media and understanding how to use technology productively in a business setting. The program teaches prompt engineering, fact-checking AI-generated content, and safeguarding proprietary information—skills that, he notes, are rarely covered in traditional high school curricula.

“Let’s make you proficient in the office suite,” Garrett has said of the training. “How do we now help you understand how to use AI? Not just from a personal perspective, but how do you improve business efficiency utilizing prompt engineering?”

The results extend well beyond the training period. Genesys places its students exclusively into paid internships—a deliberate contrast to the growing norm of unpaid entry-level positions that can effectively lock out young people without financial safety nets. During their senior-year internship, participants can earn up to $14,000. For many, it is their first paycheck from professional work.

Long-term outcomes suggest the model is having a measurable impact. Alumni who are seven or more years removed from the program earn an average annual salary of $67,000. For comparison, the typical starting salary for recent college graduates of a similar age was approximately $56,153, according to 2026 data from the career site Clever. Genesys estimates that 73% of surveyed alumni earn at least as much as one of their parents, and roughly 20% have purchased a home.

The nonprofit now partners with 205 companies spanning 27 industries, including Accenture, JPMorgan, and Mayo Clinic. Demand for Genesys-trained interns appears to be growing in specific sectors. Healthcare organizations have expanded their hiring, with Mayo Clinic’s Jacksonville campus reportedly doubling its intern cohort in the current cycle. Construction firms are also seeking more support staff as physical infrastructure projects increase, with students taking on roles in procurement, back-office operations, and quality assurance.

The technology sector, however, remains the program’s strongest pipeline. Garrett noted that many Genesys alumni have gone on to work in IT help desks and other tech-adjacent roles, drawn by the combination of professional polish and technical fluency the program provides. As investment in AI infrastructure accelerates nationwide, he sees additional openings for young workers in data engineering and HVAC maintenance.

Not every industry has been equally welcoming, Garrett acknowledged. Some corporate partners have scaled back hiring in recent years amid economic pressure. Yet the structural problem Genesys was founded to address—limited access to professional opportunity for students from under-resourced communities—remains as urgent as it was when the organization launched more than two decades ago.

“I don’t believe when employers say that they can’t find the talent,” Garrett said. “The challenge is they do want someone who’s ready to go to work.”

For the thousands of students who pass through the program each year, that readiness is not an abstract concept. It is a paycheck, a professional network, and a first step toward a career that might otherwise have remained out of reach.