Mentor in a Box
As part of the Excellence in Government Fellowship program, fellows took on a results project: six months to achieve a significant result anywhere in the Federal government. The team recognized the challenge facing women in the Federal workplace — especially those outside of DC — and the lack of mentorship available to aspiring women anywhere in the Federal sphere. The end result, Mentor in a Box, was a series of video interviews with Senior Executives at the Department of the Interior, distributed throughout the agency and made available to anyone in the Federal government.
The Goal
Recognizing the lack of mentorship for aspiring Federal employees — in particular, those under-served by existing opportunities to be a “mentee” — develop something that could stand in for a small part of what mentorship provides. Also provide a guide to the sponsoring agency on how to extend the program and grow it into a full-fledged library of advice, from work/life balance to career-building. Though not as good as true quality time with an executive, the candid insights from women in the Senior Executive Service made a down payment on mentorship resources that are scalable, significant, and available to all.
Feedback
Initially, the team wasn’t sure of the best way to reach its intended audience. A critical moment was a discussion with the head of Diversity and Inclusion at Treasury about mentorship, sponsorship, and inclusion — and the lessons they had learned about scaling to reach a huge audience. The team realized the two problems it was weighing (helping distributed members of the workforce, and providing resources to aspiring women) could be one project. From there it developed several approaches before arriving at “mentor-like resources available to all”: a Mentor in a Box.