Mentors play an integral role in H4 programs by mentoring interdisciplinary student teams and lending them their technical expertise. In return mentors establish new in-roads into DOD, IC, State Department, start-up, and climate agencies. While gaining early exposure to emerging problems, mentors develop unique bonds with the next generation of the workforce.

The Mentor’s Role

By becoming a mentor you will have the opportunity to:

• Build a relationship with government, agency, and industry partners

• Get early exposure to emerging problems

• Gain access to a highly specialized talent pool from which to recruit potential employees

• Position yourself as a thought-leader in innovation for the National Security Community, Climate and Sustainability Community, and Entrepreneurial Start-up Community

How to Participate

Coach

Coach students as they tackle problems far beyond their own experiences.

Empower

Provide insight into advanced knowledge within your field of expertise and connections to additional resources from your network.

Fund

Work with universities to provide opportunities for teams to travel, prototype, and test solutions.

As a mentor, you are an extension of the Teaching Team which influences the success  of one team with three to five students.

In ten-fourteen short weeks your team will go beyond the classroom to test hypotheses and help their sponsor better understand and address their problem.

Your role is to challenge teams to test their hypothesis, provide feedback on MVP iterations, and professional development skills. To the best of your ability, help students network the communities that their problem influences through cold calls, emails, customer interviews, and survey skills. If applicable, connect teams to those within your network who are relevant to the problem at hand and are willing to engage with students.

Remember:

While some student teams do leave our course on the path to developing an LLC, an organization, or product, H4 is not an incubator or an accelerator. 

H4 is designed to give students insight into industries and communities that benefit from innovative solutions. The H4 classroom is all about building models, heuristics, and experiences they can apply when they graduate.

How it Works

Mentors play an active role in the weekly coaching of a specific team.

As a mentor you will:

• Offer your team strategic guidance and wisdom:

• Offer suggestions on mission achievement

• Identify and correct gaps in the team’s understanding of business, military, government, non-profit, agency, or policy knowledge, hierarchies, and priorities.

• Provide your team with tactical guidance every week:

• Meet with your team each week (by phone, Skype, or in person)

• Review your team’s weekly presentation before they present

• Comment weekly on your team’s Customer Discovery progress (this is hard to do unless you are familiar with the methodology)

• Respond to the Teaching Team’s critique of your team

• Rolodex help - “why don’t you call x? Let me connect you.”

• Push your team to make 10-15 end user/stake holder contacts each week

• Meet one-on-one with your team in person, if at all possible, at least twice during the quarter; Skype/Google Hangout etc. and conference calls are OK for other meetings

• If necessary, check in with the Teaching Team at class 3 and 7 to discuss student progress

• Help your team focus; guide them to pivot if the data points for the need to change

• Attend your team’s final presentation