Mentor a DB Staffer

The Daily Bruin Alumni Network Mentoring Program, which began operating in early 2022, is designed to serve as a professional-development resource for current Daily Bruin staff members.

Originally crafted as a pilot project targeting the five 2021-22 DBAN Scholarship students, the program exceeded initial expectations by starting in February 2022 with mentors, drawn from the DBAN community, for 12 Daily Bruin staff members. Mentors, drawn from more than half a century of Daily Bruin alums, were encouraged to meet onsite or online with their protégés every couple of weeks through June 2022 to support those protégés in achieving concrete, measurable results focused on the students’ professional-development goals.

As the program expands, participating students—protégés—will continue to be matched with an appropriate Daily Bruin alum, based on their development needs and goals, for the duration of the program.

Mentors—alums of the Daily Bruin—work with their protégés at least one hour once a month (onsite or online, whatever each mentor/protégé team determines is best suited to the work they will do together) to help the students develop the skills they need to thrive at the Bruin and will also work with them as they shape their career goals.

All participants are encouraged to attend an initial online meeting to set the tone for the project. Monthly drop-in optional one-hour Zoom sessions are held for interested mentors and protégés to discuss whatever is of interest to them within the context of developing their professional skills and career plans.(These sessions provide a virtual lounge, where conversation can center on what is important to participants in terms of their current and long-term career development.)

Each protégé is very much in the driver's seat in terms of developing, with guidance from a mentor, concrete goals/products the student wants to reach/produce by the time that student has finished working with a mentor.

Two project facilitators—Paul Signorelli and Laureen Lazarovici—remain available to participants to be sure that the program runs smoothly and that any problems students and mentors encounter are dealt with expeditiously.

Plans for the 2025-26 academic year include:

• Continuation of more than 10 mentoring pairs currently in place
• An additional mentoring cycle beginning with recruitment in Fall 2025 so newly-matched mentors and protégés can work together from October 2025 through early June 2026. If we are able to continue expanding the program, there will be a second formal period of recruitment in early 2026 (for teams working together from January through June 2026), and we'll also try to accommodate requests that come to us outside of those formal application periods
• Increased opportunities for interactions between mentors and proteges through regularly scheduled drop-in meetings via Zoom and through the Slack channel DBAN maintains for present and past members of the Mentoring program

Latest updates: Sept. 30, 2025