On Mentoring: What Is It, Really?

Join three of the 2026 Dean's Awards for Excellence in Mentoring winners; Jean-Philippe Gibert, Brandon Knettel, and Caroline Shearer; as they attempt to demystify what good mentoring actually entails.

The episode is hosted by Assistant Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement Maria Wisdom, and Senior Assistant Dean of Professional Development Melissa Bostrom.

Transcript

[intro music begins]

Suzanne Barbour

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Duke GradCast. I’m Suzanne Barbour, Dean of Duke Graduate School.  

In this episode, we’ll be tackling a complex and important topic. Mentoring is sometimes described as an art and often as a science. Much of the time, it can feel like a leap of faith. What does it actually mean to be an excellent mentor in today’s rapidly changing academic landscape?  

In this special episode, we are celebrating and learning from the recipients of our 2026 Centennial Dean's Awards for Excellence in Mentoring. You’ll hear from several of the awardees, led by our co-hosts, Assistant Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement Maria Wisdom, and Senior Assistant Dean of Professional Development Melissa Bostrom. They will explore everything from curating a metaphorical library of mentoring techniques, to holding space for students during times of personal and professional uncertainty.  

It’s a candid conversation about vulnerability, growth, patience, and the profound impact of showing up for the next generation.  

Be sure to check the Duke Graduate School website for profiles of all of the Dean’s Awards winners this year, including those for Inclusive Excellence and Excellence in Teaching. Now, let’s listen in.   

[intro music fades out]

Melissa Bostrom

It's so wonderful to see you all today. My name is Melissa Bostrom, and I'm the Senior Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Professional Development in The Graduate School, and I'm delighted to be celebrating three of our centennial Dean's Awards for Excellence in Mentoring [recipients] as part of this podcast. I want to also turn it over to my co-host to introduce herself.

Maria LaMonaca Wisdom

Hi, I'm Maria LaMonaca Wisdom. I'm Assistant Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement, and I work with faculty coaching, supporting faculty careers at every stage, and also doing a lot of work to support faculty as mentors, and I'm thrilled to be part of this conversation.

Melissa

Can we turn now to our winners who are with us today to introduce themselves?

Jean-Philippe Gibert

I'm Jean-Philippe Gibert, I’m an associate professor of biology. I do math for fun and for living, trying to understand doing things.

Brandon Knettel

Hi, I'm Brandon Knettel. I'm an associate professor of nursing and global health here at Duke and also Associate Director of our Center for Global Mental Health, it’s an interdisciplinary center here where we bring faculty together to work on topics related to global mental health.

Caroline Shearer

Hi, all. I am Caroline Shearer. I am a Ph.D. candidate in ecology based in the department of evolutionary anthropology, and I currently am just studying for my dissertation—how lemurs treat each other and essentially how that relates to their health and hormones.

Maria

So let's begin with the meaning of the concept of mentoring. There is no one agreed upon definition of mentoring within higher ed or even outside of higher ed. So, I think it's, you know, it's important to have some shared understanding of that as we move forward as to what is this award for and what is it we're doing when we say that we mentor someone?

So, Jean, Brandon, and Caroline, I'd love to ask each of you, you know, when you, when you're mentoring somebody, what is your job? What are you actually doing?

Jean-Philippe

You know, I keep on pondering about this one. I go about my mentoring work as a collection of slightly different problems and/or situations that I engage with, and I approach each of them as the unique thing that they are. And then collectively, I call that mentoring. But I'm not really sure that even across those interactions there are many things that I do in a certain way every time.

There are some things that are part of sort of like my day-to-day practice. But if anything, there's something that, I feel, that engagement has taught me is that I'm at my best, and I feel like I have the best impact when I approach each of those as a separate thing.

Maria

Wow. So, it's really a constellation of different challenges, if you will. And they don't always have the same solution.

Jean-Philippe

They don't. Yeah. Different people, different situations. Yeah.

Maria

Thank you.

Brandon

I like that a lot. yeah. I'm a psychologist by training, and so that, that comes into everything I do, and I think definitely in the way that I mentor, and so, what I often think about in my mentoring approach is how to take care of a whole person, every aspect of a person. And so for me, I'll often think about that in terms of, of course, like if somebody is not in a good state personally, emotionally, if they're struggling with something in their personal life and that's not attended to, it's going to create all sorts of challenges in their interpersonal dynamics, in their work roles. and so, I try to bring the humanity into mentoring as much as I can by attending to the person as well as the task at hand. 

And then I always want to think about the future, too, that that's kind of what often motivates people is, “Yes, I can get this skill set. I can accomplish the things I need for my degree,” or for whatever the task at hand may be, “but if it's not building towards something that I'm excited about in the future, it's really hard for me to feel excited about that program.” So, I always try to make time for what comes next. And are we, are we doing a good job of building towards that?

Maria

Yeah. Thank you. Brandon. Yeah, I love the person-centered and future-focused approach.

Caroline

Yeah. When I think of mentoring, one thing that comes to mind is really just emphasizing, finding, or creating a space that offers like a soft place to land or a safe space. When people are exploring and trying to, like, discover their passions, it gives them the opportunity to feel like they can challenge themselves if they know that they have backup.

So, I think about, okay, how can you bolster the student and make them feel comfortable to make mistakes, or someone who's maybe even a peer, just like make them feel comfortable to be unsure or uncertain. Yeah.

Maria

Great. Well, thank you so much. So, I mean, obviously you were all awardees for being impactful, excellent mentors. And again, congratulations on this honor. At the same time, my sense is that mentoring for each of you is, is very much a learned practice and that, you know, there's possibly been peaks and valleys. And I wonder if, if any of you would be comfortable sharing something that you found particularly challenging as you've learned how to, to mentor effectively and maybe how you, how you resolve that.

Jean-Philippe

You know, it's funny, I had countless mentors in my career, and they all had an impact. And that's true of everyone, right? And I remember being a student, sort of like observing the things that worked and not for me. And thinking those things that I see my mentors, that I today perceive as a mistake, or something that doesn't work for me, are the things I'm absolutely gonna keep track of so that at least those ones I don't make myself with my own students.

I'm going to make some other ones that I'm not even aware of. And so, the thing that has allowed is this sort of like, library of like, okay, what are the things that I really know don't work? Plus the things that I know don't work with me, but might work with someone else, coupled with, like, “who are you?”

Right? Which is the first question that I ask myself, you know, of the person that I have in front of me. Who is it that I'm interacting with and trying to figure them out to, sort of, like, match that person in whatever situation? And the library is a living thing. You know, things drop off of the library and come into the library all the time.

So perhaps the most important thing that I've learned is that it doesn't matter how much I've learned about my mentoring practice, there's always something else to learn.

Maria

It's such a compelling response, and I've never heard anyone compare a mentor to a librarian, and I think that's what I'm hearing. I just one quick, quick question, quick follow up, if you don't mind. What is a book that doesn't work for anybody in the mentoring library?

Jean-Philippe

There are many books, right? That… maybe in sections that are not visited often. And it doesn't mean that those books won't work. They just will work with the right people, right? And in the right mentor-mentee interaction. Sometimes there are some books that, even if I know they exist, I'm never going to touch because of who I am, right?

So, I don't know if we can distill this idea, it’s sort of like a notion of awareness of the interaction, but also self-awareness. These are my limits. This is what I'm not good at. This is what I can bring to the table. Yeah.

Maria

Okay. Thank you so much.

Brandon

If I could jump in, I think shame is the book that doesn't work. It never works. I think that one should go in the historical section. Because, yeah, shame may work in the short term, but it never works in the long term. And it's one of those things that you might, yeah, get the response you want that a student or mentee, you know, jumps in and does what you want them to do, but not without resentment and emotional harm to the relationship.

And so, that's not to say that sometimes we don't have to have tough conversations and give real, honest feedback that can bring up some defensiveness. But if that's really steeped in shame, it's never going to be helpful.

Maria

Okay, so, and it sounds like too, in terms of like an example of that, it sounds like there's a real risk of shaming when a mentor has to give hard feedback. Is that right?

Brandon

I think a lot of times mentors would say that it's tough love, you know, that I'm being hard, I'm having the hard conversations. But if tough is the real emphasis there, and, and the kind of affection or like positivity of it doesn't really come out at all, it's never going to work.

Maria

In terms of your own, you know, your own learning curve as a mentor. I mean, I was wondering, is that—the feedback aspect—part of it, or is it something other than that?

Brandon

Certainly, I think that's—that kind of shame-based motivation is something we, a lot of us, have experience of in our personal lives growing up. And so, and a lot of times for our mentees, you can see that they have a real sensitivity to shame, and sometimes it comes from within. And so even when you're not trying to maybe elicit that response or be tough, the first thing they experience is this kind of sensation of failure or expectation from an authority figure that's really rooted in shame.

And I think we have to be really careful of when that's coming up and have good clarifying conversations with our mentees to say, “I'm not trying to say that you're not doing your job well or that you're not, you know, a great student mentee. But, you know, we need to learn how to be able to take and absorb feedback in a way that's not… where these kind of complicated emotions aren't getting in the way and making it difficult to work together.”

Jean-Philippe

I love that.

Maria

Yeah. You know, thank you. And as you observed, we were often so steeped in it, right? From our families or, well, graduate school, you know, in our graduate training sometimes that we don't even realize we're doing it. Caroline?

Caroline

Yeah! It's a slight diversion, but I think it really goes to kind of building that library concept. I think one of the things that can be really hard is figuring out the right way to, like, present yourself to mentees, because I'm thinking back to the mentors I've had. They, often, when you are early on in your education, you think that your mentors know everything.

And so, when I think about talking to my mentees, originally, maybe I wanted to present everything as well thought through, have answers to any of their questions. But one of the things that I think is really just a constant reworking is figuring out ways to show them that, like, it's okay to always be learning, as you said, never being finished learning to be a better mentor.

So, like, showing them that kind of vulnerability, it helps me to avoid maybe some of that shame concept. That's a hard challenge to like balance still being in that mentoring relationship, giving them guidance, but saying it's okay to like also not be perfect and that you yourself aren't.

Brandon

Yeah, they're absolutely, I think, very attuned to not just how you're responding to their mistakes, but how you're responding to your own mistakes in the work that you do and the way that you manage that and show maybe vulnerability or kind of own up to the things you're not doing great is a really, I think, important thing as a mentor.

Maria

Yeah, I think it really touches on, I think a concept we're hearing more and more about lately which is psychological safety, right? The, the, you know, the just the courage to make mistakes and know that you won't be penalized or shamed, right? For making those, those mistakes, so.

Melissa

I'd love to build on that conversation so far and dig a little bit deeper into a specific example of a time that you felt like you had to change your mentoring practice because a student's experience really kind of challenged what you'd been doing. I think, Jean talked about his mentoring library—sometimes you need to go back to the library.

You need some new books. You need something new to turn to. Tell us, what's a time when you felt like you had to change your mentoring practice to meet that student where they were?

Brandon

I think for me, that's been more of a gradual process over time. I can't really pinpoint one kind of turning point experience, but I think that over time I've gotten a lot more comfortable giving the student the first shot at things. I think I used to really kind of default to watch me do this, and then I'll give you a shot at it.

And I ended up doing a lot of the work, and I think a lot of that was really coming from my own anxieties about getting done right and feeling like I was still establishing myself in my own career, in my own program of research. And so, I needed to really make sure that things were getting done kind of by the book.

And over time, I think I've gotten much more comfortable at, yeah, really empowering my mentees to have the first opportunity on things that I probably wouldn't have felt comfortable handing off in the past. And not only is the quality not suffering, but they're learning more and getting more from the process by being more engaged from the start.

Melissa

Thank you Brandon. I'd love to dig in just a little bit and say, in my experience, when I meet lots of first-year graduate students, there are also significant imposter fears going on in that early career. So how do you overcome them and actually empower students to take their first shot?

Brandon

So I'm a first-generation college student; I come from like a small rural town in Minnesota. And so that imposter syndrome of coming into a place like, first Lehigh for my graduate program, and then to Duke, was really real for me to come into these settings and feel like I needed to really show my worth. So, I think maybe that lived experience that I have and continue to have has helped me to understand that it's not easy for people to transition to any new environment, especially when it's an environment that feels high pressure and where they have an expectation to succeed at a really high level from the, from the start.

Melissa

Thank you. Caroline, can I turn to you?

Caroline

Yeah, sure.

Melissa

So, the question is kind of, what's a time when you had to change your mentoring practice because a student's experience challenged your assumptions?

Caroline

Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that comes in here is that question was hard for me to think about, in part because I'm like, almost daily changing how things work for students because from the very get go, each time I'm developing a mentoring relationship, it's customized to that student and like, kind of how one does that, or at least how I personally do that, is really, early on, just meeting with them super frequently.

So, like, if they're a student who doesn't like frequent meetings or doesn't have that capacity, they're shy, you find that out really quickly. If they have certain needs or goals within their semester or beyond, you find that out in those early discussions and then that makes it so you're kind of just always changing to meet the particular needs of a student.

So, I guess a trite answer to that would be, I guess it's every time I start mentoring, I'm changing it to meet the needs of the student. But if I were to give like a particular instance, one that would come up was, I remember meeting with a student and assuming that they had an interest in my field because they were interested in getting into mentoring, but they talked to me and they're like, “I really want to gain access to this particular technique you use, but I, I'm interested in going into this other field.”

So, we pivoted our needs to focus on them getting that like knowledge and technique and propelling them elsewhere.

Melissa

It's really interesting. It's a little hard to think about, you know, a student coming to you and you feel flattered and then you find out, actually, it's not about you. That's a great example, thank you.

Jean-Philippe

That happens. Yeah. I fully resonate with what has already been said. Coming back to library, one of the things that was in my library was like, I could not as a student—I did not operate well with overbearing-ness and, and micromanaging. Right? And so I had promised to never be that, like, ever-present form of, you know, advisor, which is just one specific slice of mentoring.

And one thing that, to me, was a little shocking to learn and also to accept was that, you know, for some people, that is the thing that works, right? And so first, I had to accept that that was a reality. And then I had to figure out, when does it need to be implemented? Which, by nature, I'm really bad at, because I don't operate like that myself.

And so that is one that is really present in my mind because I'm never going to be great at that. But it means I need to work harder to make it happen. As Caroline was saying, by just allowing the person to feel empowered to state what they needed, after hearing it, I had to accept that, you know, I had it wrong all along.

It doesn't mean that the answer is always micromanaging. Not at all. What I'm saying is that in my case, my own bias was the opposite of that. If anything, I was— I allowed freedom that, for some people, felt a little daunting. And so that's something I had to change.

Maria

So, as I'm hearing all of these amazing responses, I'm, you know, I'm really reflecting on time. I mean, I imagine it takes you an enormous amount of time, reflection to do this well. How do you find time to mentor in the way you're all describing?

Caroline

I guess it really just comes to how do you find time to do what you're passionate about, right? There's always going to be a moment that you can communicate if you are overstretched or stretched thin—this is what I always say to my students, is just communicate to me. We can update goals to fit within your schedule. We can update needs and I do the same when I talk to my students.

If there's something coming up, I let them know really early. If I'm stretched really thin, I'll be like, okay, this plan that we have, let's move it to a different time where I can be fully present. Right? Something along those lines. As long as there's that open line of communication, and as long as you're passionate about being there for whoever you're mentoring, I find time for it. Or make time.

Maria

Thank you.

Brandon

This is maybe a boring answer, but the standing meeting is my friend. I commit when I get a new master's mentee to putting a biweekly half hour on my calendar, and it runs until they graduate. And if we don't need it, we can cancel it. But it is there, it is reserved for you, we're going to keep it most of the time. 

And sometimes that half hour is packed. Sometimes it's checking in on how your weekend was and how are you doing more broadly, or how's your job search going? And I love having those standing meetings. And I still have a standing meeting with my mentor from my K08 Award when I started my faculty role.

And, he's now a dean, and I get to keep that—It's gone, not weekly or biweekly, but monthly now, but I still get that half hour where we get to sit down and touch base. And that commitment to me, to keep that that half hour has meant a lot. And so, in some ways, it's paying it forward to my mentees to say that you're important enough to have a standing spot on my calendar, and I'm going to keep it.

Maria

Wow, that's amazing.

Jean-Philippe

Yeah. And I think that that is so important. You're important enough to be on my schedule, right? And that time is sacred. I do not cancel it. There has got to be a really good reason for me to cancel one of them. If I have done it right, they understand that, that that time is the time that we've both allocated to invest in our mentor-mentee interaction, but most importantly, in their career.

And so, not to sound overly altruistic here, because it wouldn't be true. For me, the time that I spend with my students is also really well aligned with one of the core missions of my job, which is to lead a research lab. And so, it's not true that I'm doing this only because I care deeply about their careers, which is true.

But it also aligns really well with the mission of the lab. So, I'm killing two birds with one stone. But at the end of the day, there is an issue of values which you brought up so neatly, I think, which is if you don't put it in your calendar, it's pretty obviously not a priority.

Brandon

Yeah. And I've been on the other end of that too, where a mentor said, “Open-door policy, drop by whenever you want.” And in some ways, that's nice. Right? Okay, yeah, I can drop by whenever I want. That makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, but it also puts the onus on you to be the one to drop in and ask for their time.

And it's a lot different than, you have a dedicated time and that's when we'll sit down and meet, and I'll be prepared for that time. So, I love the open-door policy alongside the set time, not as the only time you get with your mentor.

Jean-Philippe

And I’ll come back to something else that Caroline said, which is like, some folks find that, you know, sort of like, regimented, every whatever-many-days or weeks, we have a meeting time, sort of like, daunting or hard to deal with, and I always tell them that while they're certainly an accountability component to it, it's about realizing that even when you think there's nothing to talk about, there's always something to talk about, right?

And in making that space for that to happen, sometimes you will come and say like, “You know, research didn't, didn't move forward this week.” And the immediate next question is like, “Tell me more. Why did that not happen?” Right? And, you know, if there isn't research to talk about, there's careers to talk about.

If there isn't careers to talk about, there's like, what's going on in lab to talk about, and if anything, it gives us an opportunity to learn more about each other. So, sacred time.

Melissa

Well, I'd love to pick up on that thread of careers. I'm the professional development person in the room. So, of course, that's, you know, it's in my contract now for the podcast series.

So, I'd love to talk about how you provide support as a mentor for students who have just a variety of professional goals. And so, for Caroline, that might be, you know, a student who wants to do something totally different than what you are up to. It could be also, for those of you who mentor graduate students, right? Students who want to follow the faculty path. Students who want to pursue diverse career options. So how do you do that in a way that doesn't implicitly privilege what you're doing as the best option?

Caroline

One thing that really comes to mind having mentored a number of students over the years, is that, again, in those early stages, one of the first things I do is ask them what their goals might be, even if they're in their first year and they're not sure what career path they want. You can learn from their goals a good amount about what you want to be able to emphasize, and those goals might change, so checking in, going back to you all with those regular meetings, those are really lovely, figuring out what they like, that helps you to really make sure that you're putting equal weight to something they're interested in. 

And especially when I have students enter and they say they don't know what they want to do, one thing I do is spend time with them outside of the research, talking about the different options, if they are interested in continuing with learning about this subject, that you can do with it. So, I've had students who come in and they're like, “I'm not sure what I want to do.” And they go on to graduate school in this exact field. I've had others who say, “I really don't know what I want to do.” They go into medical school or they become a consultant, and each one of those, if you spend time talking about ways that they can leverage what they're doing to become a better candidate, or, like, well-rounded person for that career, that's a really easy way to just make sure that one's not better than the other.

Jean-Philippe

Hear, hear.

Melissa

You say it's easy, but it's actually, I think, not easy. I want to give you credit for that.

Brandon

I mean, for me, my field is by its nature, very multidisciplinary. And so, for me, I've practiced clinically, I teach, I do research. I'm in the School of Nursing and Global Health Institute. And so, in some ways, it, it comes more naturally in my world in that people are coming from very different places with very different interests and have a lot of doors open to them.

And so, for me, it's a real necessity in my role to keep aware of all the options available to my mentees. And so, yeah, it's, in some ways it's a challenge to, kind of keep my finger on the pulse of like, what are all the opportunities out there and available? And that's ever evolving as well. But it's something that I have really had the privilege of seeing a lot of people with a lot of—coming from a lot of different backgrounds, with a lot of different interests, and they, in their explorations, kind of in some ways help me to learn what's available. And then I can work hand-in-hand with them to see what doors that might open.

Maria

Yeah. And you’ve hit on something especially challenging in mentoring, and you've also handed me the perfect segue to ask you.

Really interested in this this notion of mentoring through change. As you've shared, you know, the job landscape in anyone's field can change dramatically in 5-6 years. In addition to the changing career landscapes or career outlooks for your mentees, I guess I wonder how have you seen your mentees change in terms of their needs or what they need from the relationship?

Caroline

One thing in this past year that's changed is just like students needing reassurance that like, they're always welcome in these spaces, because a lot of support systems have been dismantled over the past year or so, and many of the different routes that I've had support are no longer open to students to get that support before they go on to their careers.

So, looking and doing the really difficult work that you all are saying and finding this changing landscape, finding ways to support them, the students especially need that extra hand of just, “We have your back, even if the system does not.”

Brandon

Yeah. For me, I'll add that the majority of my students are coming from international spaces. Being faculty in the Global Health Institute, a lot of my students are from countries around the world. And a lot of them from the global South, even, which are not often as represented in academia as some of the other countries where we see more international students.

And that's—this is true of both my international students and my domestic students in just that students are coming with a lot more apprehension into their programs. And I think that's coming from a lot of spaces, but, some of it is apprehension about the job market and future opportunities, and some of it is about just the social environment.

For some of my mentees who are coming to the U.S. for the first time, really a lot of their exposure to the United States has just come through the media. And so that's, as we know, not always a very pleasant place to find information about a place where you're going to live for a few years. And so, they come in with a very different understanding of what the U.S. might be from what it is.

And so, really spending some time upfront of “What's that adjustment like, what were you expecting in coming to the United States, coming to Duke, and how has that differed from what how has it differed from what you expect? How can we set you up for success as you navigate those, those first months in a very new place?”

Maria

Things are always changing, as I think we're all collectively more aware of that than we have been in the past. [Jean-Philippe: Sadly.] It also hits on something I think in the mentor's job description that really is different now than it used to be in academia, let's say even 10, 20 years ago, is that we cannot assume that our mentees are going to have a work/life/job situation anything like ours.

But we none of us know what it is. So, I'm wondering if each of you, and maybe this maybe should be our wrap up question, could speak a little more to, you know, how do you mentor somebody for a really uncertain, unknown future?

Brandon

I really, I love that concept of being kind of the secure base, the thing that our mentees can rely on. And we've all been through transitions, personal transitions, professional transitions, and starting a new program, starting a new role, is chaotic for anybody in the best of times. And so I think holding that this is a time of transition for a lot of our mentees, as they are new to a role, and the feeling of kind of chaos or unease that a lot of people are feeling out in the world in general right now together, kind of creates this double challenge, I think, for our students and our mentees.

So, if we can find ways to show some stability, provide some reassurance that things will settle and you'll start to feel more comfortable in this role and be able to move forward, regardless of what direction you're coming from, I think it's really important to keep space for the personal aspects and the emotional aspects of what people are experiencing.

Jean-Philippe

Yeah, reflecting on my own answer, connecting it to what you just said, it's easy to say, “Well, things have always changed and we've been fine. Hence, what you're going through is not all that big of a deal,” right? And your answer makes me realize that an important thing that I do is just validating the experience. Right?

“Your experience is not mine. If it was, we would be the same person. We clearly aren’t, so it cannot be. You know, and I may not understand what you're going through, but clearly you are. So, let's talk about it.” And so, something that I always tell my students, especially when big changes are coming or are about to happen, that bring a lot of anxiety—

“All of this is going to have to wait. And we're going to deal with this, right? One problem at a time. Baby steps.” And so, how do you deal with change? Depends on how steep it is. But regardless of how steep the change is, one step at a time. Baby steps. Let's allow us to feel what we're going through. You cannot do harm. Yeah.

Caroline

Yeah. I'm really impressed by both of those answers for kind of dealing with these uncertain times. And it really kind of made me also think about something that we're kind of stepping through and around too, is that our mentees themselves, they have all of those experiences that they've built up. 

So one thing that really comes to mind too, is just not assuming that, like, I know the right way to handle uncertainty or I know the right way to adapt, but really encouraging or fostering whatever ways that they have found best to deal with these challenges in life, be it going through difficult new tasks or the challenges that the world is facing, really spending time making sure that that safe space is also a safe space for them to grow in their own personal ways, so that way they can become independent, strong, and keep being who they are.

Maria

Thank you so much. I'm really struck by, when we bring up the question of the future, which is so panic-inducing for many people, I think all of your responses are really highlighting a consistent theme, which is bringing people back in the present and holding them to this moment and all the rich potential of this moment and what's possible, so that maybe together we're helping to create a better future. I mean, I find that really inspiring, and I'm just so, wow, your mentees are so lucky to have you.

Melissa

This has been such a rich conversation. There are so many things I'm going to take away from today. And so, what a privilege to join with all of you and to get your, some of your insights, just some. I feel like we've just gotten the tip of the iceberg in terms of your mentoring expertise. So, we're really grateful that you could share this with us today.