A Decade of SueMentors Mentoring!

The just-finishing 2019 marks a decade of my “formal” SueMentors mentoring.

As I reflected on the decade over the last months of 2019, I realized I have learned so much – but haven’t always let mentees and other supporters know that.

So I went back to my program-evaluation career and put together an infographic to summarize the 10 years. This shows you what I’ve learned from mentees, the ways mentees have shaped  my delivery of short- and longer-term mentoring, and how I’ve been able to expand from 1-to-1 mentoring to more 1-to-many methods that meet people where they are.

Many thanks to the decade of mentees I’ve worked with directly:

• Mentees who connected through a mentoring program or a “self-referral” or a referral to me from someone else
• Several of you who “discovered” me from an online source
• Some who I’ve met in person at conferences or by happenstance (like waiting for ride-shares)
• Those who have re-contacted me

And a special thanks to Kristina Davis, a mentee who selected me as her mentor in 2009 in the APHA National Student Mentoring program and whose nomination was the reason I received the first APHA Student Assembly Public Health Mentoring award that same year.

There are many advisors, engagers and supporters that have influenced SueMentors directly and indirectly over the decade including:

• Margie Cartwright, Catherine Gergen, and Sarah Basinger at Tulane University
• Mentors for the Tulane U School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine Short-Term Mentoring Program (especially John Iskander whose suggestion challenged me to formalize the Short-Term Mentoring Process Guide, Tools, and other collateral materials) 
• Program leaders of and mentors in the various mentoring programs I’ve worked with
• Evaluators who helped this very word-oriented evaluator find ways to apply dataviz in my end-of-year reviews, presentations for workshops and seminars, and the 14 webinars that I was finally able to produce in 2018-19 (Stephanie Evergreen, Ann Emery, Chris Lysy, and Echo Rivera).

I am thankful for the decade of this Mentoring journey and excited to start the next one!

Happy new year and happy mentoring!