Social Innovation Weekend Mentors
Join us for Social Innovation Weekend as a mentor and help guide student teams as they tackle real-world challenges. This year’s theme, Literacy, invites students to explore how understanding and communication shape access and opportunity across reading, media, financial, digital, and health contexts. Your insight will help students consider how literacy influences equity, empowerment, and the ways communities learn, share, and grow together.
How You Can Help
Mentors play a crucial role in helping student teams refine and strengthen their ideas and providing on-the-spot guidance to teams as they refine their ideas and business models. Your insight can help students:
- Identify key stakeholders and collaborators
- Develop sustainable funding strategies
- Learn from and engage with the communities they aim to serve
- Navigate challenges in launching and scaling their solutions
What to Expect
As a Mentor, you’ll work with multiple teams during a three-hour shift period on Saturday, March 8th. Each session will typically last 30-45 minutes, during which you can float between teams or coordinate with student organizers to see where your expertise is most needed. Your role is not to provide direct solutions but to help teams think critically - guiding them towards the right questions, challenging their assumptions, and offering insights that push their ideas forward.
Beyond mentoring, you’ll have the chance to attend mentor panels as an opportunity to network with other industry professionals and to learn more about student startups and consulting projects within the John W. Altman Institute for Entrepreneurship, and how alumni and external partners are driving innovation within social impact.
FAQs
Do I have to commit my entire weekend?
We are flexible with your schedule. Be here when you can! We have specific shifts starting Friday evening at 7 p.m., Saturday all day, and judging that will take place on Sunday.
I'm not in the Ohio/Cincinnati area. Can I still attend?
Absolutely, you have the option to be a virtual mentor! If you would like to be present in person and require travel accommodations, please contact Meghan Smith, smith480@gmail.com.
What will I be helping with?
Students will be aware of the mentors that are attending, often, you may be sought out based on your specific knowledge/area of expertise to help consult teams. It is also common for mentors to go from team to team; you never know how your industry/life experience might be exactly what they need to hear!
