Entrepreneurship: Mentors & Mentees and Forging Authentic Connections

The mentor – mentee relationship is one that can be very beneficial and transformative. BUT many entrepreneurship programs don’t address the quality of mentors or how to think about creating meaningful relationships. Women and founders of color often are matched with mentors not from their backgrounds of points of reference. If you are a mentor and want to support New Majority founders, how do you create authentic relationships, address bias and DEI? From a mentee perspective how do you understand (and address) some of these micro- aggressions and build trust with mentors and advisors?

This is also prevalent for entrepreneurs fundraising in addressing the power imbalance between investors and 1st time entrepreneurs.

This is a collaboration between The Capital Network, The VC Inclusion Lab, Mentorship Research Data collected through a MassTech Grant, and DEI consultants .