The Regenerative Approach to Mentoring in Business

Photo by Monica Melton on Unsplash

In 1999, I designed a mentoring program for Creative Grandparenting, a new Delaware nonprofit organization. This program was so successful that, with non-partisan support, its funding was made a line-item allocation in the Delaware state budget. Within a year, it was adopted by 16 other states, and shortly after it received a National Governors’ Award for innovation. Originally for teens, it was expanded into adult programs in many businesses. The principles are the same, no matter the age of persons in mentoring roles.

Founding Background

Creative Grandparenting was the brainchild of Robert Casey, a DuPont executive, who was involved in a developmental education program that I designed for his business and led for ten years. He knew first-hand how profound the experience had been for him and all of his leaders and employees, and he wanted to apply the same principles to the design of Creative Grandparenting’s mentoring program. I accepted his invitation to design the curriculum and the mentor development process, and I personally guided the program’s first out-of-state launch in California, where it was adopted and overseen by the state’s Department of Human Services.

We started by enlisting reforming gang members in Fullerton to mentor youth at risk of recruitment into gangs who were in turn…