James Luu, right, attends a Genesys Works professional development symposium on Friday, Nov. 7, 2025, with other students in the job internship program. | Michelle Corum, Jacksonville Today
Published on November 11, 2025 at 1:31 pm
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A workforce development program is offering internship jobs to Duval County high school students, some of them from Title One schools. Major companies on the First Coast have signed up as employers.
Nonprofit Genesys Works is new to Jacksonville. It’s partnering with Duval County Public Schools to put 22 high school seniors on a workforce pathway with companies like Brooks Rehabilitation, Community First Credit Union, Comcast and Mayo Clinic, where Englewood High School senior James Luu is interning as a medical administration assistant.
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“I’m helping with scheduling doctors’ time offs and helping them with what they need, along with making reports of all the radiology doctors and sending them out to my supervisor and yeah, the experience has been great,” Luu said.
Dawn Swiers, a talent specialist in Mayo’s Human Resources Department, has seen Luu around campus.
“James has a ton of energy and just that positive attitude,” Swiers said. “You can tell that he’ll do well in health care because he loves to help others. And I think he also really hungers for new learning opportunities, so he’s got that desire to investigate and not be afraid to take initiative.”
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Splitting class and jobs
The students have to be age 18 to start their internships. After an intense eight-week summer training course led by Genesys Works, students get high school credit for their time. They go to class four hours, then they go to their jobs four hours a day at $15 per hour, filling roles in IT, business, marketing and medicine.
Luu recounted what his summer training taught him.
“We were learning how to network with high professional individuals, along with learning technological skills such as Excel and more specifically, Microsoft 360,” he said.
Participants also receive college and career counseling.
“Our goal is that students leave high school with a plan about what they’re going to do after they graduate,” said Alexandra Rudnick, executive director of Genesys Works Jacksonville. She says this class of 2026 is their first one in Jacksonville.
The program is 23 years old. Started in Houston, it now operates in seven other cities other than Jacksonville.
“Our mission is to support students who are coming from low income communities,” said Rudnick, who explains that the businesses pay the bulk of students’ salaries.
Typically, about 70% of the funding comes from the internship sites. Genesys Works acts essentially as a staffing agency and bills employers for students’ time worked. The other 30% comes primarily from donations, foundations and individual giving.
Rudnick explained that the student internships run from the second week of school through the end of July. Students have the option to wrap up at the end of June if they have college or other summer commitments.
Participating Duval County public high schools are Raines, Ribault, Terry Parker, Edward White, Englewood and Mandarin High School.
Nationwide, 93% of Genesys Works students enroll in college (compared with 49% of low-income high school students. More than half say they wouldn’t have gone to college if it hadn’t been for the program.
“We know going to college creates meaningful, economic mobility,” Rudnick said, “And so we ask our students to at least apply to one school, even if it’s not what they ultimately decide they want to do. We help them with FAFSA and scholarships and other sorts of financial support to make sure they have a plan for how they’re going to pay for college.”
As for James Luu, he already has a plan mapped out for himself:
“I plan on doing a year in college, getting my prerequisites for radiology. And then sign up for Mayo Clinic under their scholarship, do two years under the radiology medical field, get hands-on skills, and transfer that to my work career to become a (radiology) tech.”
