Reach Scholars before the window closes
We recruit college freshmen and train them through sophomore year, so preparation lands before the internship recruiting that decides the full-time offer.
The first job sets
the trajectory.
Where a Scholar begins their career is the single highest-leverage variable we can affect. This page is the evidence for that claim, and the limits of it.
The claim
The impact is not the job. It is the trajectory that follows from starting at a competitive point.
Greenwood Project exists to launch Black and Latino college students into high-trajectory financial services careers that generate compounding income growth, build family support capacity, and begin generational wealth transmission.
Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finds that early-career earnings position is among the strongest predictors of lifetime wealth accumulation. Those who begin below the median carry a penalty that compounds instead of correcting.
The problem
60% of Black graduates are underemployed within a year of finishing college, and most never recover from it.
The pathway from college completion to economic mobility is structurally broken for Black and Latino graduates. The breakdown is not a function of talent or effort. It is a function of timing, access, information, and networks, which compound into a permanent earnings disadvantage.
60% and 57% of Black and Hispanic graduates respectively are underemployed within a year of graduating, working in roles that do not require their degree. A further 4 to 6% are unemployed outright.Strada Institute for the Future of Work and Burning Glass Institute, Talent Disrupted, 2024; Bureau of Labor Statistics
The part that matters most is what happens next, because underemployment is not a temporary condition that resolves itself.
73% of graduates who start out underemployed are still underemployed a decade later. Graduates who begin in degree-appropriate roles go on to earn 88% more than high school graduates. Those who start underemployed earn 25% more.Strada Institute for the Future of Work and Burning Glass Institute, Talent Disrupted, 2024
That is the entire reason this organization intervenes where it does.
The timing
Elite recruiting starts sophomore year. Most students start looking senior year.
Financial services offers among the highest starting salaries and steepest mobility curves available to a college graduate. But its recruiting infrastructure runs on timelines and through channels that systematically exclude students without insider knowledge.
Elite firms begin recruiting during sophomore year. Most students do not begin looking until senior year, by which point the highest-trajectory opportunities have already been allocated. Internships are the gateway to full-time offers, and reaching a competitive one requires preparation, network access, and money that are unevenly distributed.
Information about that timeline travels through families and professional networks. A student with a parent or family friend in the industry learns it early. A student without one learns it late, which in practice means too late. The highest-leverage moment to intervene is sophomore year, while the gap between awareness and opportunity is still bridgeable.
“They're not underqualified. They're out of the loop.”Kwesi Smith, CEO
What we do about it
Six things follow from that analysis. This is the reasoning behind the model, not a description of the program itself.
Make the choice informed, not default
Discovery precedes technical training, because most students know one finance job. Choosing a track on evidence beats defaulting to whatever was most visible.
Teach the unwritten rules explicitly
Professional norms and communication patterns are transmitted at home in families that have them. For everyone else they are invisible, so we teach them directly as core curriculum rather than as a workshop.
Coach weekly, from people who held the role
Not volunteer mentorship. Compensated professionals who performed the jobs Scholars are training for, in a relationship that runs the full twelve months.
Remove the cost barriers
Housing, travel, and professional wardrobe, so a Scholar who earns an opportunity can actually accept it. For this population that is not supplementary. It is a precondition for the model to work at all.
Then let them compete
We do not reserve roles and our partners do not hold them. Scholars apply, interview, and win on the merits.
The chain
What we cause, and where we stop causing it.
The full pathway, from what the program produces to what it makes possible decades later, with every outcome classified by how well we can actually support it.
- Evidence-based. Supported by our own data, published research, or both.
- Logic-based. A reasonable inference, consistent with the evidence but not validated by our own data.
- Assumption-based. A belief we hold that has not been tested and could be wrong.
What the program produces
During the program and 0 to 12 months after- Career clarity and professional identityScholars develop a grounded understanding of their direction and how they fit the financial services landscape. Academy-switching during Discovery shows the alignment process works: Scholars do change direction based on what they learn.Logic-based
- Technical competence in academy-specific skillsScholars acquire the applied skills employers expect from competitive candidates. Validated through coach evaluations, interview performance, and employer feedback.Evidence-based
- Fluency in the unwritten rulesThe professional norms and communication patterns that drive advancement are invisible to Scholars with no family members in corporate environments until someone makes them visible.Logic-based
- Career entry at a competitive starting pointScholars secure roles at starting salaries well above what the typical new graduate earns, and far above the underemployment that is the realistic alternative. This is the most robustly measured outcome in the model, and the entire downstream theory depends on it.Evidence-based
Our causal contribution ends here. The rest is the Scholar's life.
Everything below is what becomes possible when the starting conditions are right, not what we claim to cause. We can measure career entry, starting salary, and employer quality. We cannot measure a forty-year trajectory, and we do not pretend to.
What becomes possible next
1 to 10 years after launch- Salary progression and career advancementScholars advance through promotions and expanding responsibility, whether inside financial services or in adjacent high-trajectory fields. The starting-point thesis is evidence-based; we do not yet have longitudinal Scholar data.Logic-based
- Sustained employment in high-trajectory rolesScholars stay in roles that require their education and offer continued mobility, avoiding the underemployment trap that catches the majority of Black and Latino graduates.Logic-based
- Financial stabilization and debt managementEarnings go toward managing student debt and covering living costs. This period is characterized by increasing capacity, not yet by wealth accumulation.Logic-based
- Direct family financial supportThis begins at career launch, not after a period of personal stabilization. Research on kin network obligations shows higher-earning family members contribute immediately. It is a primary reason wealth accumulation takes longer than the earnings trajectory alone would suggest.Logic-based
Where the advantage compounds
10 or more years after launch- Wealth accumulationEarnings consistently exceed stabilization needs and begin translating into durable assets: homeownership, investments, retirement savings. This is where the starting-point advantage materializes as wealth rather than income.Logic-based
- Economic anchor within the familyScholars become a source of financial stability for immediate and extended family. This is distinct from wealth transfer: it is the ongoing role of a high-earning family member.Logic-based
The furthest reach
20 to 40 or more years after launch- Intergenerational wealth transmissionScholars who have built wealth over decades are positioned to change the economic starting point for the next generation. This is the longest causal chain on the page and it depends on decades of variables the program does not control. We classify it honestly.Assumption-based
Ultimate impact
Scholars launched into high-trajectory careers experience compounding income growth that builds family support capacity and, over the span of a full career, initiates generational wealth transmission.
What it has produced
400 Scholars trained since 2016, and the first link in the chain is the one we can prove.
88% transition into high-trajectory roles. Across all Scholars, the average starting salary is $92,000. Everything downstream in the chain rests on that first step, which is why it is the one we measure hardest.
The hardest questions
The three most serious challenges a sophisticated funder would raise, and our answers to them.
01If you select the most motivated students in the country, what did the program actually prove?
Greenwood accepts 10 to 15% of applicants, screening for academic achievement and for attributes like grit and resourcefulness. A skeptic would argue these Scholars would have succeeded anyway, and that the outcomes reflect the quality of selection rather than the quality of the intervention.
Our response
Selection bias is a legitimate methodological concern, and we cannot fully resolve it without a randomized controlled trial, which would mean denying the program to qualified applicants. We are unlikely to do that.
But the objection assumes high-performing Black and Latino students have a clear path into these careers without intervention. The 60% and 57% underemployment rates in The problem above do not describe low performers. They describe degree holders. The trap does not sort by GPA or grit. It sorts by timing, access, information, and network, which are precisely the barriers this model removes.
So the real question is not whether these Scholars would have found jobs. They almost certainly would have. It is whether they would have entered financial services at competitive starting salaries without this specific intervention. For a population where most graduates end up underemployed, the answer is almost certainly no. We do not create talent. We connect it to opportunity through a mechanism students cannot replicate alone.
02How can you claim credit for outcomes that unfold decades after the program ends?
Greenwood claims impact extending to wealth building, family support, and generational transmission. But the program ends at career launch, and everything after that is shaped by forces it does not control.
Our response
It cannot, and it does not. Our causal contribution is concentrated at career launch. We do not claim to cause wealth building. We claim to create the starting conditions from which it becomes possible.
The distinction matters. The starting-point thesis shows that early-career earnings position is among the strongest predictors of long-term trajectory. Our intervention moves Scholars from a baseline where most of their peers are underemployed into entry points well above the typical new-graduate salary. That shift is the contribution. What happens next is shaped by individual decisions, employer dynamics, market conditions, and family obligations that no single program controls.
03Does the racial pay gap inside financial services erode the advantage you predict?
Research consistently shows Black and Latino professionals earn less than white peers in the same roles and advance more slowly. Does the model account for the possibility that the compounding advantage is eroded by the pay gap inside the very industry it targets?
Our response
The gap is real and well documented, and we do not assume it away. Black and Hispanic representation in financial services senior management has stayed close to 3% and 4% respectively. Scholars enter an industry where structural barriers to advancement persist.
But the model does not depend on Scholars reaching pay parity with white peers. It depends on them achieving a trajectory that is transformative relative to what their own path would have been without the intervention. A Scholar who enters at a competitive salary and still experiences the pay gap earns dramatically more over a career than the same Scholar who graduates into underemployment. The baseline is not a white peer in the same role. It is the same Scholar without the program.
That is not a dismissal of the gap. It is an honest account of what we can and cannot address. We prepare Scholars to enter and navigate these environments. We cannot change the structural dynamics of an industry. What we can do is make sure a Scholar starts from a position strong enough that even a diminished trajectory still compounds.
Sources
- Strada Institute for the Future of Work and Burning Glass Institute, Talent Disrupted, 2024: graduate underemployment rates, ten-year persistence, and earnings by starting position
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: recent-graduate unemployment; financial services compensation
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York: early-career earnings position as a predictor of lifetime wealth accumulation
- Government Accountability Office analysis of EEOC data, 2018 to 2020: representation in financial services senior management
- Research on kin network financial obligations in Black and Latino households: timing of family financial support