The Social Politics of Mentoring

I’ve written about the challenges of finding a mentor previously, Why the cool kids won’t hang out with you.

Let’s be frank, if you are old and pumping gas, not too many people are interested in you as a mentor, but the last few years have been good here at The Julia Group, and the dozen years before that didn’t suck either. I’ve gotten millions in grants funded, started a couple of companies. Just this year, I have a new game out to teach kids math, published a book on martial arts and another chapter in a book on Real Talk from Real Women, was listed in Forbes as one of the 40 women to watch over 40 — and that’s nowhere near everything. It’s been wild.

The more successes I have, and the older I get, the more I am asked to serve either formally or informally as a mentor to younger people. This could be anything from hiring someone for their first job to looking over a grant proposal. Regardless, there are far more requests than I could possibly ever manage to meet.

I try to do as much as I can, in part because I did benefit from some wonderful mentors when I was younger. I also try to do as much as I can because I am well aware that I did not get nearly as much mentoring as people who came from more advantaged circumstances, and that I could have done more in my career, and sooner if I’d had the benefits of more mentoring. (I can already hear my sister saying, “Christ! You have a Ph.D., company president, founded a start-up and won a world championships, what more do you want? President of Harvard…