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Engineers who mentor families: Exploring Artificial Intelligence in Coimbatore, India

It’s National Engineers Week! National Engineers Week is an opportunity to celebrate engineers and their work. In particular, we like to focus on celebrating the amazing engineers who mentor students and families and share their passion and expertise with learners around the world.

Meet Vigneshwer, a data scientist in Coimbatore, India. Vigneshwer volunteered as a mentor for the AI Family Challenge this year, where he worked with local students and their families and taught them about artificial intelligence. Inspired to help people move beyond seeing AI as a “black box they’re not really familiar with” to understanding the ways AI is a tool they can use to make their lives better, Vigneshwar guided families through hands-on projects and lessons about AI concepts and tools, and hoped that they would also tap into their curiosity to keep learning beyond the program.

“You need to learn continuously…that’s the most important thing as a human that you need to do.”

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Advice for mentors: 9 tips to help you become a better mentor for girls in tech

Mentors are invaluable! Mentors help their mentees set and achieve goals and act as a sounding board for solutions to tricky problems, and crucially, over time mentors can help their mentees develop their confidence and self-esteem. For young people in particular, mentors can model positive traits and skills around problem solving, conflict resolution, and resilience, and can provide a look into professional workplaces that students might be curious about but unfamiliar with. As the 2019 Technovation season kicked off in January, there are many first-time mentors around the world jumping into the adventure of mentoring girls in tech (or getting started through other programs thanks to National Mentoring Month). It’s an exhilarating and rewarding experience, but it can also be intimidating. For encouragement and guidance, we collected advice for mentors from the people who know best: actual Technovation mentors. Here are some of our favorite “mentorisms”:

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How you can be a great mentor: Follow the 4 C’s

Myra Nawabi, Technovation mentor

January is National Mentoring Month! There is a significant mentoring gap in the United States – 9 million young people are growing up without a mentor. Having a mentor is important. Young people who grow up with a mentor are less likely to cut school and more likely to enroll in college, as well as participate in – and lead – extracurricular activities. Mentoring has a very real impact on both mentees and mentors, and it’s a special relationship. But it can be intimidating to get started.

Recently, we asked Myra Nawabi, a senior product engineer at Lockheed Martin and a Technovation mentor since 2014, to share her advice for new mentors. In Technovation, mentors support teams of young women as they identify a problem in their community and develop a mobile-app solution to solve that problem. For most girls, Technovation is their first exposure to programming and computer science, and many mentors feel pressure to be experts in computer science to best support their team. However, Technovation mentors don’t have to be experts in the field they’re mentoring in – mentoring is about bolstering confidence and being a sounding board, not having every single technical answer your mentee might have.

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3 Steps to Connect Your Professional Development & Social Impact Initiatives to Improve Employee Engagement

Offering employees meaningful opportunities to use & expand their professional skills through social good positively impacts job performance and satisfaction.

The tight labor market and competitive global economy make it a worker’s market with talented individuals having a lot of choice in their employers. For many, especially coveted millennial and gen x workers, pay isn’t the simple solution it once was to retain the best people. Employees want jobs at companies which align with their lifestyles, speak to their personal values, and – above all – give them opportunities to learn and grow while working on meaningful projects.

How can employers stand out in a sea of options? There isn’t a simple answer. One way to rise to the surface is to embrace and encourage professional learning and development. As the skill sets needed to stay professionally relevant evolve, consider every aspect of your business a skill-building opportunity, including social impact initiatives that give employees purpose and meaning and build their professional skills.

Being a good corporate citizen is still viewed by many organizations as a “check the box” marketing or PR tactic, but a strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) partner provides opportunities for your employees to make a difference in the community while also developing skills that enhance their career and prepare them for the future of work. 94 percent of employees say that they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development. 70% of millennial employees also believe companies should make a difference in local and global communities, with a company’s engagement in the community influencing their decision to work there.

Creating purpose-driven, lifelong learning experiences on the job for your employees is a compelling reason to find ways of connecting your organization’s social impact and professional development, however, many companies aren’t engaging their employees with programs connecting these two initiatives – are you?

Here are three ways you can assess your existing and prospective social impact programs to ensure you create partnerships that improve the communities where you work while investing in your employees’ professional development.

1. Assess your corporate values and identify partnerships that enable you to successfully live up to them.

It is key to select social impact partners that align to and build upon core values held by the corporation. Causes you choose to champion have a major influence on your culture and should align to the values that originally attracted your employees. Evaluate what your organization stands for; survey your employees and identify what broad social issues resonate strongest with them. Resources like the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are a good starting point to identify broad social issues facing our world that align back to your organization’s business and values. For example, if education is an important value, define what that means to your organization. It may mean partnering with an online education platform or offering stipends to staff to encourage lifelong learning. Or, it could mean encouraging tutoring and mentoring in the communities where your employees live and work.2. 

GM mentor works with families participating in Iridescent’s AI Family Challenge.

2. Offer professional development opportunities that are purpose-driven and prepare employees for the future of work.

Employees want opportunities to make a difference in communities where they live and work. According to a recent Blackbaud study, nearly half of millennials and gen x surveyed donate their time to make an impact in causes they care about. Even more have participated in sponsored events like a run or walk. Giving time is an increasingly important way younger generations with less disposable income choose to support causes. But giving back can do more. In addition to improving communities and the emotional wellness of employees, it can also positively impact their skills. Soft skills like creativity, communication, and collaboration are becoming increasingly important as automation shifts the future of work. Employees who have volunteered for Iridescent’s global technology and engineering education programs reported being 83% more creative at work and 70% surveyed said the opportunity improved their relationship with their company.  

3. Provide and promote employee benefits beyond money.

Pay is only one of several factors affecting overall job satisfaction and employee engagement. Employees rarely stay based on money alone. Money is often ranked behind career and skill advancement opportunities and recognition and respect in the workplace. Be sure to emphasize benefits other than pay – like skills-based volunteering where your employees learn and grow. Or, spotlight extraordinary employees in your organization that make a difference in the community and show how it’s also benefiting their professional development. And, don’t forget to carve out time for employees to give back and grow.

Identifying and partnering with nonprofit organizations that align to your company’s corporate values and provide purpose-driven experiences for your employees that enhance their skill sets are just some of the ways that you can increase job satisfaction and long-term retention at your organization.

Technology and engineering education nonprofit, Iridescent regularly partners with organizations around the world including Google, NVIDIA, GM, Salesforce, and Adobe to connect professionals building the newest technology with educators, parents, and kids curious to learn them. Visit iridescentlearning.org to learn more about how your organization can engage its employees through mentorship opportunities that use and build their professional skills while also inspiring others to be innovators and leaders.