Design Story
Mentor in a Box
As part of the Excellence in Government Fellowship program, fellows participated in a results project: six months to achieve a significant results anywhere in the Federal government. The project team recognized the challenge facing women in the Federal workplace, especially those outside of DC, and the lack of mentorship available to aspiring women anywhere in the Federal sphere. The end result, Mentor in a Box, was a series of video interviews with Senior Executives at the Department of the Interior, which were distributed throughout the agency and made available to anyone in the Federal government.
The initial set of videos can be watched here.
Mentor in a Box
The Goal
Recognizing the lack of mentorship for aspiring Federal employees--in particular, those under-served by existing opportunities to be a "mentee"--develop something could suffice for a small part of what mentorship provides. Also, provide a guide to the sponsoring agency on how they could extend the program and add new videos to the lineup and grow it into a full-fledged library of advice on topics ranging from work/life balance to career-building. Though not as good as true quality time with an executive, candid insights from women in the Senior Executive Service, the finished result provided a down payment on mentorship resources that are scalable, significant, and available to all.
Feedback
Initially, the team wasn't sure the best way to reach its intended audience. A critical moment was a discussion with the head of Diversity and Inclusion at Treasury about mentorship, sponsorship, and inclusion, and particularly the lessons they had learned about scaling to reach a huge audience. The team identified that the two problems it was considering (helping distributed members of the workforce and providing resources to aspiring women) could be one project. From there, the team developed several approaches before arriving at 'mentor-like resources available to all': a Mentor in a Box!
Credits
Beth Walden McCabe (project team member)
Jennifer Schaming-Ronan (project team member)
Tauqeer Aslam (project team member)
Senior Executive interviewees
Department of the Interior video team
Alison Miller (program coach)
Lorraine Cole (diversity and inclusion executive)
My Roles
Project team member
Interviewer
Visual designer
Platforms
Video
Printed materials
Web