With registration of two hundred graduate students, post-docs, professors, and professionals from Yale and other universities, the 6th Annual Equity in the Job Search Symposium was a great success!
This year’s symposium was centered on the theme “Mastering Inclusive Mentoring to Catapult Your Career” and included two workshops, a keynote talk, and an interactive lunch small group discussion held both in person on Yale’s campus and virtually via Zoom. Starting the day was the workshop by Yale’s own Senior Associate Director in the Office of Career Strategy, Dr. Jacob Gonzalez, on how to build and maintain a professional network. “Dr. Gonzalez was a highlight of the Equity in the Job Search Symposium. I am so grateful to have heard his thoughts on expanding my network while in my first year at Yale,” said Claire Chouinard, a graduate student in Chemical and Environmental Engineering.
The day proceeded with a second workshop welcoming Dr. Patti Ippoliti from Columbia University. Dr. Patti is a self-described “builder of leadership talent” and an accomplished business executive, senior consultant, coach, and graduate business professor. Her workshop on “Unconscious Bias and Its Influence in Mentoring Relationships” gave a thoughtful overview of the types of unconscious biases and their impacts in the professional world. In addition, she shared “her secrets” for successful mentoring relationships. “Her style is great, very engaging, really liked her T-I-M-E acronym and mentoring secrets,” an attendee noted referring to Dr. Patti’s acknowledgement that a good mentor takes the T-I-M-E with their mentee to Teach, Inspire, Motivate, and Empower.
After small group lunch discussions, Dr. Audrey Murrell of the University of Pittsburg closed out the day with her keynote talk, “Why Mentoring Matters for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Dr. Murrell presented extensive research on mentorship documented in her several books (Mentoring Dilemmas: Developmental Relationships within Multicultural Organizations (1999); Intelligent Mentoring: How IBM Creates Value through People, Knowledge and Relationships (2013); Mentoring Diverse Leaders: Creating Change for People, Processes and Paradigms (2017); Diversity Across Disciplines: Research on People, Policy, Process and Paradigm (2019)). She highlighted unconventional routes/roles of mentorship such as peer-to-peer mentorship or how mentorship can act as a “buffer.”
During the final sendoff, the Equity in the Job Search Symposium recognized several mentors that have made a lasting mark on their mentees. You can read about them here under “2022 Recognized Mentors” on our “2022 EJS Symposium” page.
A sincere thank you to all who attended and contributed!