Exploring the Affinity Leaders and Learners Mentoring Program with the ALL Alumni Liaisons

[MUSIC PLAYING] HELEN KIM: Welcome to Northwestern Intersections, where we talk to alumni about how key experiences have propelled them in their life's work. I'm Helen Kim for the Northwestern Alumni Association, and this month we'll be featuring mentors and mentees of the Northwestern Network Mentorship program in light of National Mentoring Month. And what makes this episode even more special is that you'll hear from our three alumni liaisons of the new pilot program called Affinity Leaders and Learners Mentorship Program, an identity-based program that connects undergraduate students to alumni leaders.

Alumni and students can sign up by January 29th, and to learn more about this program, go to www.mentor.northwestern.edu/programs/affinity. Or you can go to our show notes on our website at www.northwestern.edu/intersections to access the link.

All right, Julian, Evan, and Brad, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I invited you three because you three are the liaisons for your Affinity Clubs for the new program that we started through the Northwestern Alumni Association, the Affinities Leaders and Leaders program, ALL for short. This is a compliment to the Northwestern Network Mentorship program that has been around for a couple of years, but before we get really into that, I want to ask you all a little bit about yourselves. So Evan, would you like to start us off?

EVAN FROST: Yeah, Helen. I'm really happy to be on the show. I'm Evan Frost. I graduated from SESP in 2017. SESP love, social policy, and political science major. On campus I was really involved with the student section for Northwestern sporting events through Northwestern Wild side. I actually work for the university now. I work for the law school as a front line fundraiser for the law school's annual fund, primarily focusing on our young alumni from the law school.

In pre-pandemic times, I also work part time for the Chicago Bears in sort of a fun customer service role at the stadium at home games. I'm originally from Cleveland, Ohio.

My name is Julian Hill. I'm a Class of 2008 alum of the college of arts and sciences. Specifically I focused on philosophy. I'm from outside of Chicago, a small town called Kankakee. I currently reside in DC where I am a clinical teaching fellow at Georgetown Law, and specifically I work with their social enterprises and nonprofit law clinic, which basically means when law school students are trying to get experience while in school, they go to the clinic and they do work under the clinic supervision. So I supervise students when they represent clients. I co-teach the seminar for the clinic. I also help with administrative things that need to be done with the clinic and I also do some community outreach and what have you. I've been in DC for about three months, and I was in New York at a nonprofit and then at a law firm before that for six years.

BRAD GRAHAMS: Hi, everyone. It's great to be here. Brad Grahams, Class of 2017, SPS Masters in Public Policy and administration program. By day, I worked at the Environmental Protection Agency where I'm their principal White House liaison for environmental protection budgeting. And basically in that role, I work with senior leaders at the EPA, other federal agencies, the White House and Congress, and developing our agency's budget strategic plan for every fiscal year along with all the policy development around that.

By night, I'm an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University where I focus on teaching research methods, program evaluation, and micro-economic applications from the public sector, and I also lead their masters in public policy and administration mentoring program, which I love doing. It's great to be here with all of you.

HELEN KIM: Great. Happy to have you all here. Let's talk a little bit about your Affinity Club that you're part of. So Julian, tell us a little bit more about NUBAA.

JULIAN HILL: Is the Northwestern University Black Alumni Association. I didn't get involved with the Alumni Association until maybe two years ago. So I was recruited by a really good friend of mine, Denise Fleming, with whom I had served in student leadership when I was at Northwestern with FMO, back when I was one of the coordinators.

And so I got involved specifically, actually to work on mentorship, and so what drew me to take on a leadership role was the idea of trying to put together a program that would allow alumni to directly connect with students to provide personal, academic, professional support. And so this program started to sort of percolate, and and there was some excitement around it. I was pretty excited because that was kind of what I came to NUBAA to do.

HELEN KIM: And if someone wanted to join NUBAA, how could they go about doing that?

JULIAN HILL: believe on the alumni association page, NUBAA has its own page, and so folks can sign up for membership through that. They can also reach out to us if they have any questions. There's a Facebook post that we have.

HELEN KIM: Awesome. And I'll include all the links in the show notes, too, for folks who want to learn a little bit more about each of the Affinity clubs, but let's go to Brad. Tell us a little bit more about NUPAC.

BRAD GRAHAMS: Yeah, so my experience with NUPAC mirrors a lot of what Julian's was with NUBAA. So I've been involved with NUPAC, which stands for Northwestern University Pride Alumni Club for about a year and a half, and our club represents the university's LGBTQ+ community, so we really focus on making connections between different student and alumni groups, issues of significance to the Pride community.

Like Julian, I got involved in NUPAC through interest in mentoring. So I really started my NAA, or Northwestern Alumni Association involvement, working in the Northwestern Network Mentorship program, where I helped build out a mentoring program for our masters in public policy administration program. And while in that role, I really wanted to move toward affinity-based or identity-based mentoring, and Crystal Black and others in the Alumni Association kind of directed me to a NUPAC where I have been focused on just this activity for about the last year. I've been involved in this level of mentoring for about a year. I'm really looking forward to talking more about it today.

HELEN KIM: Great, and then Evan, tell us about NUA5.

Yeah, so NUA5 stands for Asian and Asian-American Alumni, so it's really fun to be able to interact with this global Asian network that's tied to Northwestern, which is something that I've really enjoyed. So I've been involved with NUA5 since about August 2018. I actually heard about NUA5 at a young alumni, I think like, New chapter, new neighbors, at Goose Island, which was really cool. And unlike Brad and Julian, I joined NUA5 purely for a social element. I wanted to meet other young Asian professionals in Chicago and sort of explore my racial identity.

I'm mixed race and didn't really do a whole lot with my Asian identity growing up. And by the time I was sort of comfortable with myself to know that this was something I wanted to do, I was already a senior, so I couldn't join the student orgs and stuff, but having the chance to get involved as an alumni is something that I'm really grateful for.

And I didn't get a chance to ask you and Brad about this but if folks want to join your affinity clubs how would they go about that?

BRAD GRAHAMS: Pretty much like what Julian mentioned. For the NU Pride Alumni Club, we have a web page, a Facebook, and a LinkedIn account. People are more than welcome to join us through there. You're also welcome to reach me at my Northwestern email or through classes or alumni work. I'd be glad to reach out to you there.

EVAN FROST: Yeah, totally down to be hit up by some potential NUA5 volunteers. Facebook or LinkedIn would probably be the best way to get involved with NUA5. And if you have an event or something that you want to put on or an idea for something to engage the alumni community, we'd take that. If you just want to be a general volunteer and help out with the stuff we're already doing, we'd appreciate the help.

BRAD GRAHAMS: And that's such a great point because we're looking for involvement in all sorts of different ways in our club, too. It's not just one thing. You can just be a general volunteer, a board member, or help with something specific.

JULIAN HILL: Agreed. Definitely we could use the support on our student engagement committee so folks should definitely look into that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

HELEN KIM: Now let's talk about the ALL program, the Affinity Leaders And Learners program. So tell us what this program is and what are you most excited about this program?

EVAN FROST: The ALL program, as Helen sort of said, is an offshoot of the NAA's existing mentorship program. It really hopes to address and create a specific space for communities within the Northwestern Alumni Association and may have specific needs not tackled or addressed by the larger program. This is something that excites me about this program is that I got into front line fundraising because I love connecting people to opportunities or resources or causes that they really care about. So to be able to serve individuals in need of those connections within the Asian community and identifying as Asian, and the community that I'm growing into, finding my way into and really have every right to be in is really exciting for me.

BRAD GRAHAMS: Yeah, I totally agree with Evan. You know, this mentoring program was meant to supplement and complement other mentoring. The members of NUPAC have really been looking forward to this because it offers some more specific and tailored opportunities to address some of our student alumni needs that have come up over the years, in like really thoughtful ways. With people, we're hoping you can really relate to and having those discussions and meaningful ways while also helping you explore your community.

Much like Evan mentioned, I, too, am kind of using my time at NUPAC to explore my own identity and where I fit in in society, more broadly, and this opportunity was always a great way to also further that for many different students, faculty, staff, and alum.

JULIAN HILL: If I could chime in, just following up on that, one of the things that is really exciting for me is thinking about how to capture a lot of the excitement that I've been hearing among alum, particularly over the last several months. I mean, there's a fair amount of Black students who have been involved with some of the defunding police energies over the course of the past several months. And so, you know, there's been a lot of dialogue, what does that mean? Where do alumni fit? A lot of need to sort of educate and sort of understand, and so I'm just excited to use this as a way to facilitate making those connections so that it's not just about alumni sort of bestowing or transferring all of this knowledge that we have with these gray hairs, but also being somewhat of a mutual sort of relationship where the students can really give us some insights on the experience and how we can better support them and the work that they're doing.

HELEN KIM: Yeah, absolutely, and I do want to mention that you three are part of the pilot of the first round of the program, where Black, Asian, Asian-American, and LGBTQ+ students and alumni, and that doesn't mean that it's including all the underrepresented groups. Definitely the NA is hoping to extend the program to include more underrepresented groups in the future. But as of now, you three are the pilot program, which is really exciting.

So let me ask you this, do you all have mentors, or have you had mentors in the past? Have you mentored someone or anything like that?

BRAD GRAHAMS: I can start from this one, guys. So I was lucky enough to have what we now call an affinity or an identity-based mentor about 16 years ago. It wasn't called that at the time and it was somewhat accidental, but I was assigned a mentor who is also part of the LGBTQ+ community within the federal government. And being new to the Environmental Protection Agency, I didn't make much of it at the time. I was just part of a mentoring program, but as I had unique issues in my own life that I was trying to navigate, being out in STEM and out in the government, I realized early on that that mentoring experience was so much more meaningful because I was talking to someone else who was also out in STEM and in government for a while.

And so for me, that really helped me navigate my career, my initial work at EPA, and kind of where I wanted to go in ways that made me rethink how mentoring should be for others in my future years.

So a lot of ways, I'm seeing it all now, I had been seeing in my agency previously, just in a different way under different terminology, but it's great seeing it roll out with this additional community-based format where people can identify more people in their community and perhaps have more discussions with different people on various issues that they face, offering them more unique mentoring experiences.

And Evan, I know you mentioned in exploring your community, you probably have a lot to add to that, too.

EVAN FROST: Yeah, and Helen, I just wanted to point out that yes, we sort of do have these hubs for like Asian identified people, LGBTQ identity, and people in the Black community, but if there are intersections within those communities, as well, you can also sort of jump between the different circles as well, which is something that I'm really excited about as a mixed race person.

Yeah, I didn't really have a mentor in college or know what a mentor was until I started working full time. I didn't really know what a mentor does. I thought of them sort of like as a sponsor, sort of someone that I will become friends with and they will ultimately get me a job. But that's not the case. Sort of having worked a little bit, I see that there are a lot of stereotypes about Asians in the workplace, that Asians are only skilled in quantitative work, that we aren't really leaders in the workplace. We'll always be somewhat foreign in any space that we're in. And I think that sort of extends into career paths and opportunities, as well. If you're not an Asian doctor, engineer, or as far as at Northwestern, at one of those top-tier consulting firms, you might feel a little bit lost.

I didn't know that higher Education Fund raising was a thing outside of phone-a-thon until after college and now I couldn't see myself really anywhere else. But anyway, it's really easy to sort of internalize those negative stereotypes and believe them. So seeing someone that looks like you that has succeeded or is going through the same struggles is really incredible and validating and important, I think.

JULIAN HILL: Luckily, and I guess slightly different from Evan and Brad, I had the benefit of a mentor when I started at Northwestern. Didn't really have much experience with mentoring before then. I think I shadowed a lawyer for a day and subsequently never saw him again. I hope he's doing well. But I was matched with Mary Portillo, who's a professor in AFAM sociology through a program that I believe is no longer in existence, which was the Sankofa program, that was run through African-American Affairs, whereby freshman Black students were matched with Black faculty, staff, or administrators, and the idea was that it would be sort of a year-long mentorship to help us get acclimated to the campus, to being students, and just the different types of things that I think Evan sort of was alluding to and talking about people's assumptions about you, how do you deal with microaggressions, how do you deal with that insecurity and imposter syndrome that sometimes lurks up inside when you're in classes. And maybe you're the only Black student, or maybe only Black male student. That kind of was an experience of sorts.

And so as someone who was from a really small town outside of Chicago, who kind of goes into spaces as I am, it was a jarring experience to kind of think through how to navigate Northwestern that first year. And so having Mary Portillo, who's now a friend, auntie, just a confidante who's helped me in so many different ways to see who I was on the inside, and to invest in me during my very first year was phenomenal. It gave me a lot of confidence, and led by the end of my first year, her helping me get my first internship.

And so my beneficiary of mentoring, that was one of many mentoring relationships I went on to have, both in undergrad while I was in law school as a professional and now sort of seeing the benefits of that as a recipient, and even before now, seeing the value in sort of how I can sort of show up for other folks as a mentor really started with Mary. So that's been my experience, or that's how it started, I should say.

HELEN KIM: Yeah, and I'm hearing from all three that having a mentor is incredibly important and really helped you guide your way and navigate through your career path and also lifestyle. So I want to ask you all, so why do you think having an affinity-based mentorship program, why is that needed?

From what I know from my colleagues, the ALL program wanted to create a more tailored experience for students seeking identity-based mentorship. So in your opinion, why do you think that's important?

JULIAN HILL: I'll kick this one off. And I think, again, Evan was speaking to a little bit of this as well. I think for folks who identify as Black or who society identifies as Black, there are a lot of assumptions that are made about our capabilities that maybe aren't necessarily very positive or very supportive. And so it can be pretty difficult to figure out how to show up, how to navigate those spaces, and I think having mentors who have a little bit of experience going through four years at Northwestern, five years at Northwestern, how many years, people end up being at Northwestern, can help provide folks with some of that feedback that is hard to get from someone, when it's like, hey, you know, this professor said I was really articulate. It really sounded weird. Is that something that you've dealt with et cetera?

That's, I think a huge benefit both in terms of while you're at school, but also when it comes to recruitment, so doing interviews and thinking about how you show up and how to navigate the assumptions that people might make about your capacity. And so yeah. I think there's an added benefit that's hard to capture when you don't think about affinity that you get when you have affinity-based mentorship programs like this one.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BRAD GRAHAMS: And following on Julian, I would say the same applies to members in our community, as well. Even after having many years of mentors, some mentors just aren't the best fit for every issue you may face. Some people call it situational mentorship, others call it identity-based mentorship, in all cases, what we were looking to do with the ALL program is offer anything from situational to full-time mentoring support that speaks to what was mentioning, which is things that you may not want to talk with just anyone about, things you may be navigating through your identity and you don't even know how to ask yourself what you need. These are things that we're hoping that this program can help support going forward.

EVAN FROST: Yeah, and I'm sort of realizing here that one of the first big events that I helped NUA5 organize was a career panel about the bamboo ceiling, which is this idea that there's something keeping Asians and Asian-Americans out of sort of that C-suite, like high leadership level positions within organizations. And, you know, this ALL program can sort of be that panel for people when they need it before they sort of enter these spaces, how to position themselves so they don't get passed over for certain opportunities. And it's really exciting for me.

BRAD GRAHAMS: Following on Evan, I liked what he said with the bamboo ceiling just now. One thing people in the Pride Alumni Community can face, particularly in STEM, people make assumptions about a person's abilities before they even know them. And particularly in STEM, you can face a lot of adversity where people imply that you're not quantitative enough or may question your prior internships or fellowships based on your own identity.

These are types of things that can be really hard for someone, for example, in the STEM community to address. I know in the government community, I faced that several times myself. And, in fact, when I was starting in the government in 2005, were it not for the mentor I had, who is also LGBT+, I don't think I would have functionally addressed as many career challenges I had, as appropriately as I had without having had someone in the same boat, who had faced many similar microaggressions or just open aggressions within the workplace.

HELEN KIM: Great. And, you know, I think each community, I believe, has their own sets of accomplishments, their own sets of difficulties and challenges that they go through or like, we go through. So in your opinion, what kind of support do mentees need for mentors in your respective communities?

JULIAN HILL: For a lot of the Black students who I've been in communication with, I think just having someone to listen to them. I think there's a lot of experiences folks have where they feel like they're being gas lighted, where they feel like what they're experiencing, the feelings that are coming up, they're being told are like false or that they're not real. So I think having alum who are mentors, to just hear them. To hear from a place of compassion, to hear from a place of seeing them I think is really invaluable.

I think that being able to think about different scenarios where folks are either explicitly or sort of indirectly experiencing discrimination, like how to handle those in the moment, after the moment. And then the last thing I'll say is really how do you balance an investment that you might have in community with your profession? I think that's something that comes up a lot, particularly in this moment where we're in a moment where anti-Blackness anti-Black racism, violence against Black folks, and other people of color, as well, is coming up and people trying to figure out what do I do? How do I show up?

I'm a banker or I'm thinking about going into banking, or I'm someone who wants to be a librarian or someone who wants to be an engineer, like how do I show up in these spaces? And I think alumni who are mentors can offer some different perspectives for students around if you have time, this is what you can do. If you don't have time, OK, this is what you can do.

For me, as someone who considers himself an organizer first and a lawyer second, thinking about what is your political goal and how can you figure out what's going on in your community, what are the issues people care about? And then just figuring out what resources do you have the bandwidth to provide? If you're working at a law firm like I did my first 3 and 1/2 years out of law school, for example, it might be a little bit more, maybe some money, and maybe looking at some things and editing. But I think that investment in community and balanced with profession, I think is something that comes up a lot. And I think a lot of Black folks, and probably, I think, Evan and Brad could probably speak to this, as well, you know, it's something you have to kind of think about navigating. I think that's something that we've seen as a need for mentees to be able to navigate.

EVAN FROST: Yeah, Julian, that's a great point. And something that I'm really pleased about with the way that the ALL program is doing this is that I think that while we are creating spaces for our own communities, there's also space for conversations between communities, because I know in my experience, with the Asian community, there is a lot of anti-Blackness, so that is something that we can work with and sort of address with this program, which I think is super cool.

Brad, I have two thoughts on what you just said. It's funny, you're not quantitative enough. I'm too quantitative, it seems like, with these stereotypes. And these assumptions before, you get to know someone. A lot of times in the Asian community, you know, when you hear the term Asian, you think of Chinese, you think of Japanese, Korean communities. People aren't even being considered Asian when you say Asian.

To be Asian is to be part of this really great globe-spanning diverse community. And if I'm being candid, you know, the Asian Alumni Association has struggled with recruiting non-East Asian volunteers and board members. Most of us already stationed in a lot of our networks are primarily East Asian. We're working on it. If you want to volunteer, please, please hit me up.

But yeah, this mentorship program needs to make sure that South, Southeast Asian, central Asian, Pacific Islander voices are represented and listened to, both as mentors and as mentees in the program and just in the Northwestern Alumni community overall. Their needs, their concerns, their ideas, just as valid, just as unique as everybody else's, and making sure that the entirety of the Asian community feels included and is included is really important.

JULIAN HILL: You know what comes out from my, as everyone was talking was just thinking about just the different intersections of identities, and one of the things that was really interesting when I was at Northwestern as someone who was like low, maybe middle-income-ish, growing up is just like, the fact that there are like, some pretty well-off Black folks. And it's just kind of a thing that I didn't know was a thing. And so I definitely would encourage alum who just have different experiences with these affinity groups to just think about the ways in which they can show for students who might have had similar, or who might have similar situations.

I think it's different to talk to a Black alum who is like fourth generation Northwestern versus a Black alum who was maybe first generation or different class. As Brad might have mentioned before, just thinking about the intersections around sexuality, gender identity, those sorts of things and how they show up.

And so the more diversity we have within the mentor bucket, the better we can really serve students. And that's what this is really about. For this program in particular, like it's really about the students. How can we be most useful? And I think if alums sort of think about that, and think about if you had an experience already, had experience have where maybe you didn't have a mentor in undergrad. Like how can you be that person to kind of show up and to support a student because they turned out they turned out great, but not everyone turns out quite as great as [INAUDIBLE]. So just something to think about.

BRAD GRAHAMS: Well, Julian, I like what you mentioned about the bucket dynamic because even within our communities, not only intersectionality, there's all our components within the pride alumni community. For example, you know, I, as a gay man, may not feel able to comment on various things as someone of the transgender community faces, because it's just that's not my experience.

And so one thing that's great about the ALL program is it offers you ways to meet various people in that community to get an idea of a perspective. And to Julian's point, someone who's fourth generation Northwestern versus someone who is first generation or undocumented may face totally different challenges in that space.

The more volunteers and the more participation we can get, the broader that ALL community can be and the better tailored and supportive the community can be for each student, and hopefully that will just make the program that much more robust.

HELEN KIM: Right, because this is a program where we want the students to feel seen, to be in a personal mentoring relationship that really means a lot to them, especially during their most formative years in college. So I really like what you all said about really diversifying the bucket of mentors that we have to sign up for this program, and the matches created by this program are going to last for five months from February to I believe June 2021. What do you all hope that students and alumni will get out of this program?

JULIAN HILL: I can start. The first thing is I hope it goes beyond five months. Me and Mary were only supposed to be cool for a year. It's become a lifelong friendship. Like I said, an admiration that I have for her. And so that's one. I think two, if I want to think about it from an alumni standpoint versus from the student's standpoint. From a student standpoint, I just hope that students get whatever they're looking for, whatever it is I think there are ways in which this could be super helpful from a professional standpoint for that student that really just wants to focus on that. I think there are ways in which this could be useful from an academic standpoint for a student that might be struggling and figuring out what they want to major in or whatever the case may be.

This might be a really hard year for a lot of students just on a personal level, and they might just need to want to listen. I really hope that this can be a space that really gives students what they need in this moment. And moving forward, and I think for alum, I just hope that they're able to satisfy the desires that I've heard articulated over the past several months to kind of be engaged with students, but also to them to be challenged. I think this is a moment where people are really rethinking how things as big as like, our economic system works. And I think the students are way more radical now than I was when I was their age, and I think there's a lot for alum to learn.

I think there's a humility that I hope alum will bring into this space, as well, just to kind of again really try to see the students' perspective and what have you. So I'm hoping that they get that out of that, and hopefully if we build communities out of this, as I think Evan and Brad sort of mentioned, that you can build some new relationships across the line, but also maybe have a couple of students that you're working with, as well, as part of the community feature, which I'm really excited about with the ALL program, because they'll be paired with an individual student, and there will be space to create, when NUBAA is politically excited by, which of these communities or families that will have multiple alum, multiple students in that way as Brad was mentioning before, and I was kind of alluding to, we can increase the bucket of opportunity in terms of people being able to meet different cross-sects of the community.

BRAD GRAHAMS: Yeah, I couldn't agree with Julian enough. Like Julian, I hope it's not just five months for a lot of reasons. I think every successful relationship is never time-based, whether it's short or long. It's more about building those relationships and learning, and more to Julian's point, I think more now than ever, probably, at least in recent history, the time for dialogue is more important than less, and I think for everyone it's learning for all. For people who are looking for mentors, they're learning more about how to navigate their career in these uncertain times with everything going on.

For the mentors out there, learning where views are coming from and why students feel what they feel in these times, is also really illuminating and can really lead to education for everyone who is involved. You know, and as Julian mentioned, this is about a community, too. I mean, obviously you'll be paired with one mentor who we hope will really give you a great experience. Then there's the community dynamic too. We don't want you to feel limited in just one person, but know that you can go out to a community of folks were all really invested in your success and helping you grow as a person. No matter where you are and your career path or what generation of student you are, but there's a place where we all kind of feel like you belong.

EVAN FROST: Yeah, it's funny. I work for Northwestern, but because I'm on the law school campus, I often feel really separated from the undergrad experience and what's going on there, and you know, just following a few different Twitter accounts, you can sort of find that Northwestern community again, especially with what the undergrads are going through and experiencing.

But for the mentors, just reconnecting with Northwestern, I think that will only make these communities that we have and the Northwestern community at large just stronger and better and more representative of who we are.

For students, like Brad and Julian said, you know, you're not alone. Don't be afraid to ask for what's rightfully yours. And you have every right to be in any space a white, straight man already occupies. Let's go do it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

HELEN KIM: Thank you for tuning into today's episode of Northwestern Intersections. For more information about our podcast, please visit northwestern.edu/intersections. Until next time, stay safe and take care of yourself and your families.