Pictured: Wendy Maldonado D’Amico ’93 of TSAI CITY Mentoring

Are you interested in providing your professional expertise to young innovators, change-makers, and entrepreneurs at Yale? If so, read on!

The new Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (CITY) is actively recruiting women and people of color to join its mentor network. Launched in the fall of 2017, Tsai CITY has the mission to inspire and support students from diverse backgrounds and disciplines to seek innovative ways to address real-world problems.

Our students are Yale undergraduates and graduate students who are starting businesses, organizations, and initiatives to make the world a better place. 

Project examples

Some examples of student initiatives for the summer include:

• a crowdsourcing financial instrument to bring solar panels to low-income communities
• a documentary film project showcasing alternative stories of black Americans
• an agroforestry company importing Ethiopian honey
• an aquaponics company
• a nonprofit that integrates Muslim immigrants into American society
• an app to connect local chefs to foodies to combat social isolation
• a fashionable steel-toed boot for female engineers

Expertise needed

We are looking for mentors with expertise in specific industries and areas, including technology, healthcare, manufacturing, fashion, food, finance, energy, international trade, nonprofit, social entrepreneurship, filmmaking, agriculture, sustainability, retail, cultural institutions, real estate, and more. 

We also need mentors with functional expertise in branding, marketing, finance, operations, intellectual property, leadership, venture capital, hiring, software engineering, big data, customer identification, product prototyping, organizational capacity-building, and startup experience, along with many other skills.

Mentor profile

Mentors should have specific expertise to offer, enjoy working with young people, and provide targeted, constructive feedback.

Commitment

We will tailor the mentorship to your availability. You can offer a one-time “laser” coaching session; a conversation once a month by phone or video-conferencing; or meetings every two to three weeks.  

Mentors typically coach one team at a time. Mentors are carefully matched to student teams according to mentor expertise and team need. Each match is monitored for quality of interaction on both sides. 

Screening

All mentors are screened over the phone with a 30-minute interview before a match is considered. Mentors who pass the screening are invited to register in our mentor database.  If you are interested in becoming a mentor, please contact me at [email protected] to schedule an interview time. In the subject line of your email, please use “Tsai CITY Mentoring.” We look forward to hearing from you!

- Wendy Maldonado D'Amico '93