Named by Forbes Magazine as one of the world’s top 30 social entrepreneurs, Rafael Alvarez is founder and CEO of Genesys Works. Established in 2002, Genesys Works is a non-profit corporation that changes the trajectory of life for underprivileged high school students, from one destined to a lifetime of low wage, dead-end jobs, to one in which they will fully participate in the economic mainstream. The way the organization accomplishes this is by training and employing students to work in meaningful internships at major corporations during their senior year in high school so they can discover that they can indeed enter and succeed in the corporate world. As a leading example of social enterprise, Genesys Works operates very much like a for-profit corporation and has engaged as corporate clients the largest corporations in each of the cities in which it operates. Under Rafael’s guidance and vision, Genesys Works has grown from serving just 10 students in Houston in 2002, to serving over 800 students in Houston, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Chicago, in 2012. Genesys Works’ compounded annual growth rate is over 50 percent in spite of the economic downturn of the recent years.Prior to starting Genesys Works, Rafael worked for eleven years at Compaq Computer Corporation (now HP) as a corporate strategist and in other engineering management positions. Rafael holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University and a M.S. in Engineering Management from the University of Houston.