Get some mentorship in your life!

This week I'm beginning a new formal mentorship program tailored toward young media professionals. It was started this winter by a group of friends who wanted to share their knowledge of the industry, learn a thing or two and have cocktails along the way :o)

Its members are mostly in their 20s and 30s, work at well-known media companies and are part of great professional organizations. (For those of you "in the know," it's a burgeoning Ed2010 - minus the no-TV-people-allowed rule and plus the have-a-little-melanin-in-your-skin request.)

Anyway, side-stepping some connective dots, here I am with yet another person to offer me advice on my career. And I say another because I collect mentors and career advice like middle-age women collect Hummels. Ever since middle school I've sought out people to emulate professionally (you know, other than my artist/guidance counselor mom and minister dad). I never did it because anyone told me to, or really even suggested it. I started sitting at the heels of the well-heeled because I wanted what they had achieved and knew that they knew how to help me attain it.

Now, this may seem like a no-brainer to you, but I'm sure someone out there needs this advice: mentors, whether informal or formal, can provide you with professional insight, give you an industry status boost and help you develop career clarity. If you're older than 18 and don't have one, you need to get like Beyonce and "check up on it" (um, for all you non-pop culture savvy folks, that means "inquire about the matter :o)

With that stated, I'll be posting more about mentorship relationships and my own new experience in the near future.

Until then,

~The (Apprentice) Aspiring Media Maven*

P.S. For information about the growing networking group I'm a part of in the Big Apple, contact me directly.

UPDATE: You can still contact me directly, however, the group - Color Bars - now has a website: http://www.colorbarsnetwork.com/ Go check it out!