Program Aids Veterans Entering Corporate World

"I know from the Army the value of mentoring," she added. "What are the logical career paths? And specifically for me -- I'm a woman; I have children." She said she is looking for a female mentor "who is successful also with children and a family."

Goodfriend said the idea is to match mentors with veterans as closely as possible without pigeonholing. "It may be better to have a woman with a woman," he said, "or an African American with an African American mentor."

He has assembled a high-level bipartisan advisory board, including former secretary of state George P. Shultz, former Senate majority leaders Robert J. Dole (R) and George J. Mitchell (D), former deputy defense secretary and World Bank president Paul D. Wolfowitz, former Treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace.

"It's not whether or not anyone is for or against the war, but it's for the troops," Pace said in an interview. "It is certainly something that is very, very helpful to our vets. When it comes time to leave the military, they don't have any connections outside."

As evidence of the need, when the program officially opened two weeks ago with 300 slots, Goodfriend said, it received 800 applications, though it had no publicity -- most heard about it by word of mouth.

Goodfriend is working closely with the Army Reserve. "ACP is not a 'jobs' program for men and women leaving the military," said Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz, chief of the Reserve, in an e-mail statement. The program, he said, "aims to strengthen the relationship between employers of America's leading corporations and those who have served our country, often at great sacrifice."

The Army Reserve has partnerships with companies for training, under an employer outreach project involving, for example, medical technicians, truckers and police officers. But American Corporate Partners is the first program aimed specifically at mentoring.

Goodfriend said he launched the project because he recognized the importance of mentoring in his own Wall Street success. He is also a mentor to at-risk children from poor neighborhoods in New York. "Mentoring can make a vast, vast difference," he said.

He would not disclose how much of his money he used for startup costs but said it was not much. "The amount of money I've spent so far, you could spend," he said.

Mostly, he said, he relies on friends and colleagues for favors -- free office space at Emigrant Savings Bank in New York, Web site design by a relative, a prominent law firm doing all the legal work without fee. "What I've done right now, anyone can do," Goodfriend said.

He hopes to expand beyond the six companies currently involved but said, "I've been turned down by many more companies than have signed up."

He goes through the program's advisory board members to make contacts with corporate chief executives he doesn't know. And he said he is not looking for money or contributions, since his organization is not a charity but a partnership among corporations that he hopes will continue after he is gone.

And what drives him? "It's a lot more meaningful than being a banker," he said. "I'm probably too old to enlist, so this is my way of making a contribution."

He added, "If you said 10 years ago I'd be doing this, I would have been astonished."