Taking an interest in the troubled teenager, a guidance counselor kept [Bill Granville] out of prison and in school, switching his course load from shop classes to college preparatory courses. Granville cleaned up his act, discovered an aptitude in math, became the first kid in his neighborhood to go to college and went on to a successful career as an executive at Mobil Corp.

"I wanted, coming from that world, to share that experience," said Granville, 49, the executive vice president of Fairfax-based Mobil's international consulting services division and one of the oil company's highest-ranking black executives. "It's sort of a Head Start program for many of these kids who wouldn't have gotten the exposure to this kind of thing from their parents or in the inner city."

In setting up the academy, Granville said he realized that his success in overcoming his background and making it in the corporate world could be an example. "There are only a few of us in corporations of inner-city backgrounds who have really made it," said Granville, who describes himself as one of the "Jackie Robinsons" of corporate America, being among the first wave of blacks recruited into corporate management in the early 1960s. "I've had a very good career with Mobil. I think it's a message."