Mentorship: The Investment That Pays Big Dividends

With Artis Stevens

President and CEO, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America

Every year the United States spends more than $1 trillion on infrastructure. The monumental investment is earmarked for building roads, funding connectivity, and supporting the farmers who feed us. At the local level, government and private sector funding constructs schools and shores up mass transit, data centers, and power grids. And yet one of the most important structural elements is often underfunded and missing from the conversation happening in boardrooms, courtrooms, and the halls of government: human relationships in the form of mentorship.

Mentorship is rarely discussed as a crucial element of success for individuals and society even as research shows that it contributes significantly to the economy. In fact, economic connectedness—relationships between people of different socioeconomic backgrounds—is one of the strongest predictors of upward mobility and earning power, according to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America’s recent report, “A Future Built on Mentorship: Why Mentoring Is the Essential Infrastructure Our Future Needs Now.”

In this interview, Artis Stevens, president and chief executive officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the largest and most experienced youth mentoring organization in the United States, explains how mentoring is a crucial part of business strategy and why organizations should embrace the practice as a future-shaping solution to today’s most pressing societal challenges.

(Read the full article here)