MentorMe

As experts in the field of adult education, we know that even though the barriers and struggles faced by our students are unique to the individual, one important missing piece holds many of them back.  We call this many things: guidance counselor, coach, therapist, peer advocate, teacher, parent, or mentor. The reality is that most of our students need someone they can go to in the moment when they need help facing challenges, especially our entrepreneurship students.

Studies done by the International Journal of Human Resource Studies show how vital mentors can be to the process of starting a business. This is even more the case when we seek to expand the number of entrepreneurs to include marginalized populations as we do in our Entrepreneurship training program for female immigrants of color.  

Our tool, MentorMe will develop, train, and manage a network of volunteer mentors who can assist marginalized (and often low-confidence) entrepreneurs the struggles they face on a daily basis as they attempt to launch and sustain their businesses.  

MentorMe is a prime example of human centered design in that it uses technology that extends a tried and true human need for connection. But unlike LinkedIn or other networking platforms, MentorMe’s interface is designed for the needs of a very specific demographic that is vastly underrepresented among entrepreneurs. This is true in its content and application as well as its UI in that it is pictographic and accessible to individuals with medium English literacy.

At its core, MentorMe is a mobile app that incorporates a basic matching algorithm that aligns an entrepreneur-in-training with a person to support their questions, which can range from a sounding board to more technical issues. In Stage 1, MentoMe will be populated by our vast network of volunteers (ours and those of our partners), though as the app becomes more used, we intend to encourage other agencies across the country to register their volunteers.  

Our app starts with a basic premise that is often overlooked by other networking platforms: when trying to start a business, new entrepreneurs who are immigrants feel more comfortable seeking help from other immigrant entrepreneurs who are further along. This app tries to highlight that for the learner by keeping the technology simple. The interface allows new entrepreneurs to identify their countries of origin and native language. This is done with a pictographic UI in order to assist individuals with lower English literacy and to provide a comfortable experience for low confidence learners who often are timid to start their own business due to a sense that they are not capable. We know that individuals who might be gifted though less formally educated struggle with self-esteem (McArthur, Francis, Caruana, Boyes, & Badcock, 2016).

Keeping our key demographic in mind, MentorMe will be a mobile app for both IOS and Android. As a 2021 Pew study demonstrates, only 6% of adults in the US lack a mobile device. The same cannot be said of desktops. This app is created to be experienced on a phone or tablet first and foremost both at the level of how the user interfaces with the app (swipes, gestures, etc.) and because it requires that the user allow the app to track his/her geographic location. 

The MVP (minimally viable product) of the tool is a cloud-native solution that will not require integration with any outside data providers (or data lakes) or access any external API libraries at first, and all of the data will be encrypted and stored privately to protect user data. At launch, the tool will be natively available in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, and French. All functionality will be supported locally, including the content management system associated with the resource library; however, there may need to be some data considerations made to support SSO (single sign on), authentication, and connections with outside data sources, including but not limited to connections with state Departments of Labor and additional resources. 

To support continuous improvement of the application, the team will adopt regular updates and improvements managed by our team on an ongoing and perpetual basis. This process will be supported and guided by continuously surveying (and aggregating, anonymizing) individuals, subject matter experts, and other relevant stakeholders. Continuous usability and security testing will include hardware and software-specific testing to ensure industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance while optimizing individual stakeholder journeys and growth. 

A current study looking at entrepreneurs in the US shows the following breakdown by race: 15.4% for Latino, Asian (6.4%) and Black or African American (6.3%). When we look at further studies that break out gender, we see an almost 20% difference in men’s favor. These numbers tell us that if we truly want to find ways to bring under-represented individuals into entrepreneurship, Black, Asian and Latina immigrants are good populations to target.

Over the years we have seen a trend among female immigrants that we describe as an internalized bias of low expectations. Many training programs offer pathways for these populations centered on childcare or hospitality, as if those are the only two sectors available to female immigrants of color. If training opportunities only provide paths to low-paying jobs it should be no surprise when these learners internalize that limited expectation for themselves. 

A recent study done by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) looking at immigrants seeking citizenship demonstrates this same type of internalized bias. In this study, we see that immigrants who have every reason to seek citizenship often don’t because they lack confidence in their ability to complete the process. From our own experience teaching immigrants to be entrepreneurs, especially from communities that are less open to female entrepreneurship, we see the same struggle. 

What is needed is not just traditional support methods but a more personalized approach centered on individuals and their very specific needs. MentorMe not only seeks to fill this need, but it will do so in a way that works better than a LinkedIn because it is culturally sensitive to the learner’s needs. The approach is to match folks not only with other more experienced entrepreneurs but with other entrepreneurs who share the same culture and language.

If the goal of this Challenge is to increase the number of successful entrepreneurs, then we must do two things:

1. Try new approaches to mitigate barriers;

2. Tap new populations that are not represented currently.

MentorMe does both. The approach it takes and the support it lends is not being done currently in a way that leverages technology so that it can scale. Its human-centered design is based on the long established need of mentorship that many cultures support, but that is often lost in the realm of supporting entrepreneurs because of a misconception that entrepreneurs are solo operators and that only those who are brave and confident will succeed. MentorMe takes a different tack, instead choosing to build up confidence in female immigrants who do not readily have role models to help them see their own potential. 

Put simply: MentorMe focuses on a need that could make the difference between getting more women of color entrepreneurs, and as a result, remedy a growing inequality in that space.

Though immigrants in this country have long been economic engines through self-started revenue generating enterprises, if we look more deeply at representation, we see that females of color, especially those who have less formal education, are under-represented as entrepreneurs by a good margin. This is where our solution, MentorMe comes in. It provides the necessary piece in solving this equity puzzle: mentorship that connects financial, business, and performance experts with under-represented entrepreneurs–both those who are just starting and those who need help expanding their businesses.

Many training programs, even good ones who are interested in pushing back against this kind of disparity, fail to address the full challenge of getting these individuals to start their own businesses because of two reasons. The first we discussed above. They push short-term solutions leading to jobs that have historically been filled by women of color. But even groups that avoid that pitfall, often fail because they rely solely on less-personalized methods, such as robust training and wraparound services. From our experience these methods are necessary, but they do not fully complete the support.

C2C’s entrepreneurship curriculum was created by our staff of linguists and curriculum designers with decades of experience working with all levels of ESL students. It has already served thousands of learners and because it is digitally native, learners obtain vital digital literacy skills as they prepare to start their own businesses. While C2C works with students academically, we have partners with case managers who help participants get to a place where they can focus on their learning. As a result, we have students whose basic needs are met. 

Though we can say that our academic and wraparound service ecosystem is strong, the psycho-social challenges faced by many of our entrepreneurs aren’t addressed. Lack of confidence and self-esteem are at the base and must be addressed if we are going to get more talented, skilled, and high-potential women into entrepreneurship to put those skills and talents to work. A program seeking to teach these learners must be sensitive to the fact that their participants are vulnerable, but teachers can only do so much. Mentors are needed.

Current number: 200 entrepreneurs of color

In FY24, we will increase to 300 entrepreneurs with a goal of assigning 50% a mentor (regardless of whether we win this or any other award). 

In five years, our goal is to have 1,000 entrepreneurs served and matched by MentorMe.

Currently, we work out of two counties in Maryland in the DC metropolitan area. Montgomery County is suburban and known for its overall affluence, but there are pockets of poverty that exist and are almost exclusively aligned with race. We also work out of Prince George’s County, which is historically a Black community though in recent years a larger Latino community is forming in specific areas of the county. 

C2C is run by educators and community activists. We work on a project-based approach, which means that every staff member has a turn at leading projects. Our overall organizational strategy is built on a partnership of staff and Board. Our Board is Chaired by a Black woman with our Board committees being chaired by individuals who came up in the same communities we serve (Black, Latino, and Asian).

We build trust by listening. This may appear as both a vague and overly obvious response, but at the core of what we do as educators, we actively listen. In our classes, as stated above, we interview each of our students individually, and we have our instructors, who build trust with those students, run these interviews to ensure honest responses. 

Regarding businesses, we provide a program called C2C@Work, which allows us to run classes to upskill entry-level (though promising) employees on-site at no cost for the employer. This program has allowed us to speak with small company owners to better understand what they are looking for in the way of employees and skills. 

These are two key examples that articulate what we mean when we say we are actively listening. “Active” refers to the fact that we change course as needed depending on what we hear.

The main goals of MentorMe are to increase support for under-represented participants and to recruit more eligible candidates, who without mentorship would not have the confidence and support necessary to complete the process of starting a business. 

Key Subgoals are:

1) Recruitment of volunteer mentors in the communities from which participants come;

2) Automation of training and onboarding to create a cost-effective way for other agencies to feasibly adopt MentorMe.

Key metrics include:

1. 300% growth in participants matched with Mentors in two years; 

2. Improved retention of targeted demographics to 92%; 

3. Improved completion rate by targeted demographic by 20%; 

4. 25% reduction in support staff needed for volunteer mentor support; 

5. A minimum of 5 agencies to adopt MentorMe by the end of Year 2. 

Metric 5 listed above points to our long-term goal of sharing this app with other partners to register their volunteers so that they can complete the asynchronous training for prospective mentors. This would, with time, create a national directory of mentors that any participant with the app could pull from.

Beyond the financial benefits of a prize like this, support from Truist and MIT Solve would help bring to light the gap in service that MentorMe is designed to fill. We feel strongly that more attention must be given to under-served communities beyond education, training, and wraparound services. The missing piece is attention to the psycho-social needs of individuals. Often we speak of supporting the Black community, Latino, or Asian communities; advocates and allies for these communities addressing barriers to social equity and focusing on populations at the social level, without meaning to, can sometimes forget that these participants are not all the same just because they come from certain racial or ethnic groups. We must work to fix social problems socially, but we must also look for ways to incorporate systems of support that are personalized. 

When we look at institutions that often serve more affluent participants (think anything from Ivy League schools to corporate banks), we see that services are often individualized. Clients who are affluent expect that kind of service. Why, then, do we not attempt to give the same kind of support/service to female immigrants who are poor? Truist and MIT Solve support would help us make this case so that other service organizations can adopt approaches that are also individualized. We think this will add to the growing responses to social inequity.

From a technology standpoint, this prize will help us take MentorMe to a point of viability. Currently, we have processes for training volunteers on how to be mentors, for onboarding them, vetting them, and for matching them. Similarly, we have a process for matching students who want mentors, but the processes are housed across different software and linked by data staff. This is not scalable and forces the entrepreneurs to wait for their match longer than is ideal. Support from Truist will allow us to bring all of these processes into one app and make it useful for new entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs-in-training as has been described in this award application. 

Beyond technology, however, with Truist and MIT Solve’s name recognition, we would hope to be introduced to other agencies seeking funding so that we can share MentorMe and work together towards the ultimate goal of creating a national directory of trained mentors who any low-confidence entrepreneur could match with, leading us to the aforementioned national directory, our long term goal for MentorMe and this project as a whole.