Mentor Spaces Now Powers the Largest Mentorship Community for Underrepresented Talent
Denver, CO, FEBRUARY 25, 2021 — Mentor Spaces, a virtual group mentorship platform that helps companies scale their diversity and inclusion efforts, today announced a partnership with INROADS, the nation’s largest nonprofit source of paid internships for diverse, high-performing, undergraduate students. With INROADS supporting more than 5,000 vetted students each year and over 30,000 alumni, Mentor Spaces is on a path to establish the largest virtual mentorship community for underrepresented talent.
While recently published data from McKinsey & Co shows that Black employees are leaving early-career jobs in droves due to the lack of support and opportunity at their organizations, Mentor Spaces and INROADS are providing a space for early-career Black professionals to learn and grow. The partnership creates organic opportunities for mentorship and helps to cultivate workplace cultures to support Black employees, two key areas of opportunity for organizations to improve diversity and inclusion, according to the Wall Street Journal article published alongside the research.
For fifty years, INROADS has helped businesses gain greater access to diverse talent through continuous leadership development of outstanding ethnically diverse students and placement of those students in paid internships at many of North America’s top corporations, firms and organizations. Through its vision and mission, INROADS is committed to delivering innovative leadership development programs and creative solutions that identify, accelerate and elevate underrepresented talent throughout their careers. While launched with only 25 interns and 17 sponsoring corporations, INROADS has grown, impacting students from more than 35 states serving over 1,000 interns at more than 200 companies and government agencies.
“Our partnership means that Mentor Spaces now powers the technology enablement necessary to scale virtual group mentorship to all INROADS interns and alumni,” said Forest T. Harper, Jr., president and CEO, INROADS, Inc. “The Mentor Spaces platform will provide immediate value to the cumulative INROADS community, allowing interns and alumni to network with each other, easily connect with mentors and further cultivate their own communication skills to excel in their careers. Our founder was inspired by Dr. King, and we are carrying on his legacy by launching this partnership during Black History Month to collectively make an impact for underrepresented talent.”
INROADS has always recognized the need for coaching and mentorship for all interns within the program. As part of the INROADS digital transformation, which was accelerated due to the pandemic, Mentor Spaces provides technology solutions that allow scale to support the growing number of students. With Mentor Spaces, INROADS interns, both initially vetted candidates and those selected for job opportunities, will have an exclusive community on the Mentor Spaces platform. These members will share their experiences via synchronous and asynchronous communication to make career decisions with confidence. As an INROADS alum who interned at longtime partner organization United Healthcare, Mentor Spaces founder and CEO Chris Motley believes this partnership will only further help to positively impact Black students and early-career professionals.
“With organizations across the globe making significant strides to support the BIPOC community, we are proud to be on the forefront with INROADS,” said Motley. “This alliance truly shows how great the opportunity is for all organizations to further support emerging leaders. We look forward to positively impacting these young professionals with opportunities to connect on the leading platform for virtual mentorship.”
This follows the recent partnership with the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA®) to support more than 20,000 members with virtual group mentorship on the Mentor Spaces platform. With these two partnerships totaling more than 50,000 professionals, Mentor Spaces is on a clear path to establish the largest mentorship community for underrepresented talent. Both the NBMBAA® and INROADS Mentor Spaces communities have been launched during Black History Month.
Launched in July 2020 as a result of a research project funded in part by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the innovative Mentor Spaces platform connects Black and Latinx college students and early-career professionals with mentors to maximize their career potential while simultaneously giving companies a more direct pathway to exceptional, underrepresented talent.
To learn more about Mentor Spaces, visit: https://www.mentorspaces.com/
ABOUT INROADS
INROADS was founded more than 50 years ago. Inspired by the famed I Have a Dream speech, Frank Carr founded INROADS to remove career barriers to corporate opportunities for people of color. It is the largest nonprofit organization committed to leadership and career development for underrepresented talent in the world. INROADS has prepared more than 154,000 diverse leaders with pre-employment skills and graduated more than 30,000 alumni into full-time professional positions with more than 1,000 corporate partners. Currently, INROADS serves 800-1,300 interns and 200 corporate clients. Learn more at INROADS.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn: @INROADSInc.
ABOUT MENTOR SPACES
Mentor Spaces, a Techstars portfolio company, helps make workplaces more diverse and inclusive by facilitating virtual mentorship among employees and prospective candidates. The Mentor Spaces platform allows corporate mentors to communicate with early-career Black & Latinx candidates in career interest-based groups making it easier for companies to attract, hire, and retain diverse talent. Companies use Mentor Spaces to build a diverse talent pipeline, improve retention, and enhance corporate culture. Learn more at mentorspaces.com.