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Money Focused Podcast
Helping ordinary people, become extraordinary with MONEY! Each weekly episode is packed with actionable tips, expert insights, and real-world advice to help you grow financially and take control of your future. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up your wealth, you’ve found the perfect place. Get ready to transform your financial journey, one episode at a time!
Money Focused Podcast
EP 60 - Creating Opportunities for First-Generation Technologists
What if you could close the wealth gap through the power of education? In this episode, I'm joined by Chanel Power, founder, and CEO of Mentor Me Collective, she shares her journey to propelling hundreds of first-generation technologists. Her story shows the power of intentionality and community support in tackling economic hardships, with the power of education. We also discuss Mentor Me Collective's efforts to support high school students to seasoned professionals, focusing on certifications, projects, and mentorship. Chanel shares how their partnerships with Google and Microsoft provide free educational resources to her students and Mentor Me Collective's goals to lead in tech recruitment by being a bridge to prosperity to so many underserved people. This is a great episode, make sure to tune in!!
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Welcome back to the Money Focus Podcast. I'm your host, moses the mentor, and on this episode I'm thrilled to have Chanel Power with us. Chanel is the founder and CEO of MentorMe Collective, which is an organization dedicated to closing wealth gaps through affordable education and workforce training. She's helped hundreds of people become first-generation technologists and I'm just so excited to get to know her more in this episode. Hope you are too. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Thanks again for having me. This is so amazing and I just want to salute you for the work that you're doing and just uplifting the community when it comes to how we as people can come together and share resources. So I just want to shout that out. So, as you knew, I'm Chanel, born and raised in New York City. My mom was a single mom and I have two other siblings and so, growing up in New York City, my mom really focused a lot on making sure that we had quality education. It was a very huge, huge deal in our house and she went through so many loops to make sure that we were at the best schools at least the most well thought out schools, I'll say, in New York City that we could afford through public education. So anyway, in retrospect, I discovered at an early age that I really had a love for mathematics and science as it became and was really natural to age that I really had a love for mathematics and science as it became and was really natural to me.
Speaker 2:I also had a passion to help those who were affected families who are affected, people who are affected by addiction and I was trying to figure out if there was a minimally or non-invasive way to have some kind of surgical application to help those who are struggling in that and that means.
Speaker 2:And so, like I said, came to college, wanted to pursue it, had various opportunities to intern and I just realized that maybe this may not be for me.
Speaker 2:Also, having to retake a whole bunch of classes in biology, I was like, but I was, I was staying true to the path, y'all, but I ended up graduating with a double major in math and chemistry and, thankfully, throughout my career, my collegiate career, I've been blessed the Lord has blessed me with having a multitude of experiences and job opportunities from, you know, the health sector, from being a medical scribe in the pharmacy, working with the VA hospital, maybe. On the other end, like you know, trying to fill in during the school year or the academic school year as a STEM educator, creating different kinds of curriculum for kids and getting them you know STEM, and, on the other end, leaning into, like, the operations or the administrative side of work. So, moving forward, I graduated, I was on my way to medical school but I told my mom I was like, actually I think I want to take some time for myself and you know some parents like mommas who have invested in you becoming the first doctor out of family. Honey, my mom was not trying to hit that Not that girl.
Speaker 1:She's too old for a walker.
Speaker 2:Right, right, she was so not having it. My mom was traditional, like old school, and so I was like mom, like I just want some time. You know me, very millennial, like you know. I need some time for me. I need to find myself, because I felt like a lot of my who. I was was very much encompassed in the work that I did and all the things with school. But thankfully, the Lord touched her heart because I was praying. I said, lord, please touch her heart. And she said, ok, you can take a year off.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that one year would turn into many years later. I took some time and I said, lord, I'm going to pray, I'm going to fast and I'm going to believe that you have something for me and, if indeed, your word going to ask that you show me that it's true. I always tell people like you know your story and everything that you do, everything that you've done, every path that you've taken, it's all intentional, it all makes sense. Along the way, I was like, lord, help me to figure out how I can make tangible impact in the community. And I went and prayed and the Lord was like, well, why don't you help people, those who have been recently furloughed, those who have, you know, coming out of college into this, you know, economy, help them with getting their next steps. And I began to research what does it look like for wealth to come back into the Black community? I didn't know anything about the Black wealth gap during that time, where I found a lot of information around it and realized how aligned the work you know that I felt like I was supposed to do really helped to come back down.
Speaker 2:During that time I spent, you know, the majority of my time with helping individuals. I had a post that went up like May 29th 2020. Hey, if anybody needs help, happy to provide free resources and help, you know, for 15 minutes, let's have a conversation so I can help. And so, you know, it turned into like, I think, 300 plus people signing up overnight. So over the next three months I was super busy.
Speaker 2:So many things were, you know, obviously happening and we honestly grew and kind of converted into something again like overnight. So really quickly, you know, ramped up a website, ramped up this and that help again to support, and honestly trusting God that he had my, he had my future already planned out and just resting in that I've been able to be blessed in this opportunity in this space and honestly didn't know that Mentor Me Chanel at that time would even turn into Mentor Me Collective. I was just doing it out of obedience, but after a while I thought, ok, well, now it's 2021. We're still going. Now it's 2022. We're still going, and 23 and 24. And here we are.
Speaker 1:All right. So you walk through the birth and being faithful throughout that process the birth from me to me, collective, and that's a great story and you know, I appreciate you giving that information. But you know, now I want you to not be humble at this moment because the program has since made some great strides and you have a partnership with Google. I see my feed is flooded with people who are giving you praises and you're doing some great work. So talk to me about from that time when you start really getting your traction and you start getting some strategic partnerships to help magnify the mission. What was that experience like?
Speaker 2:So that's a great question. To be honest, it came out of nowhere. For me, the joy in the work was very much about the people and oftentimes, you know, when you see a whole lot of communities and initiatives start up, you hope that that is the case, but when you realize that they're not around anymore, you realize that it really was not so for me. I knew I said, lord, if anything, I don't want to be a person, if anything, because at that time I wasn't even thinking about the organization. I don't want to be a person who starts something and not finishes or doesn't continue to do it with my whole heart. So, to your point, as people begin to see the heart behind the mission, the heart behind the organization, and understand that the impact of Super, like you know, was there, it was, I guess, easy for people to see the value in joining, but for me I would say that there was a little bit of disbelief because, again, it was never started for that. You know what I mean. But I would say, throughout the journey of starting MentorMe Chanel and now MentorMe Collective, I really started first with doing that one-on-one mentorship right and then I realized that I couldn't, you know, do everything on my own and my network was able to help and support me. So that's where the collective came into play.
Speaker 2:Through the collective, I realized that there was a missing link to people specifically getting into tech successfully. Yes, I can pair you with a mentor. Yes, I can do the career coaching and help you with your resume, your LinkedIn, the way that you talk about yourself, the way that you network and all the things. But if you don't have competency in the role that you really want to go for or in the role that you're going for, if there's no education there, then our work is, you know, in vain. So that's how we began realizing that the real, real center of helping one to close the Black wealth gap, to increase access to opportunities, is going to come from access to quality education. And the reality is people specifically from the Black community don't always have the means to upskill, to invest in that way, especially if you're working jobs that don't, you know, don't give you the access or the finances that go past or beyond you being able to save for rent for the next month.
Speaker 2:So I knew that I wanted to make sure that if we do get opportunities, and as we get opportunities, that individuals who are part of our community do not have to face any kind of economic, economic barrier to get them to that next step. And so, thankfully, we've been able to create programs. We actually started our first program in 2022 with Microsoft, miro and the Band Review, to a hundred black and brown individuals to become user designers and user researchers, and since then we've had a ton at least about 80 to 90% of those individuals graduated to go on to get promotions, to start their masters, to start and complete their PhD I mean, it's just been phenomenal or even work at companies like Google, apple, and the list goes on and on. And so we started there with that Tyler Mated program. About 90% of the individuals were Black women or were women, sorry and about 85 or 87 were Black women. So just thinking about more again, increasing that representation, increasing that access is super, super important and again, I'm seeing the means of you know, those mentees and those fellows begin to, you know, enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Speaker 2:We have partnerships, again with Microsoft. We have partnerships with so many different companies and communities Canva for nonprofit, microsoft for nonprofit, google for nonprofit, even and so, again, people seeing the mission excited to support. We're putting ourselves out there as well and being confident and knowing that, as we're continuing to grow, we want to make sure that folks in our community have resources that they need to continue to succeed. So now we've since launched our first cohort with Grow, with Google, where we're providing free licenses completely free for folks to get their certifications from cybersecurity, data analytics, it support, digital marketing, e-commerce, ux design, project management you know the list goes on, even with Google Cloud. So we're seeing folks. We're getting ready to actually graduate Well, they'll be graduating at the end of this month, so we're super excited. So, yeah, we're seeing impact. We're super excited to continue that impact and we're hoping to onboard even more partners to help us with training the next generation of technologists.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a huge accomplishment, especially you know the partnerships that you guys have. It's been a relatively short time, you know, so that's really a testament to how well the program works and them just really believing in your mission. So you know, kudos to you for that. But what I was going to ask you I mean because again it went from MentorMe Chanel to MentorMe Collective what was the biggest hurdles you had with getting it to that collective part?
Speaker 2:My mentees actually became my team, which is crazy. They began believing in me more than I believed in myself, to be honest, and it actually was a mentee that told me you know, you need to turn this into something that you can build upon, because I was just okay, we're just keeping it as ad hoc Calendly links, you know, like calendar links. So thankfully, god has sent really good people in my life Again, like I said, as mentees, to help with not only scaling, but also to help with connecting me to other people who want to be a part of again the collective. And so the collective is not only a collective team internally, but also a collective network externally people who want to mentor, people who want to speak, people who want to pay it forward.
Speaker 2:I will say I noticed when I came into the space originally I encountered a lot of individuals who had this elitist feel, but outside of that I started meeting people who actually really, really wanted to help and had hearts to pay it forward. So I will say that the challenge I would say really was deciphering like who I can actually lean on and who I probably was not going to be able to long-term. But once I figured that out and once we began to establish relationship, from seeing the quality of individuals and candidates that were, you know, being referred to them or, like you know, for mentorship or to be referred in general to their company, you know it was kind of easy for folks to say, hey, if you need another mentor, sign me up. Hey, if you need another speaker, sign me up. I want to be able to give back in this way.
Speaker 1:What's like your target audience for your program?
Speaker 2:Is it?
Speaker 1:like young professionals, college students, or it could be a mid-career person Like well, who are you really looking to target?
Speaker 2:So this is a great question. Originally it was just specifically for career transitioners, but I felt like it was limiting, especially in the amount of abundance of resources that we were beginning to get access to. So now it's a multitude of individuals. It's high school students who are interested in getting into tech or maybe learning more, or maybe just parents also who want their children to begin to kind of immerse themselves in it.
Speaker 2:We have early career or college professionals as well, those individuals who are looking for mentors or resources or some kind of access to professionals in tech who can help them be better individuals in themselves and also getting them to their next career step. We have early career professionals as well, those individuals who are just like I'm here, but I'm a first generation individual and I'm not sure how to navigate. And then we have energy professionals, right, People who are seasoned, who are excited about giving back, who are excited about learning more, about how they can continue to grow professionally and personally as well. So I'll say in general, we are here to serve anyone who is considered a first generation technologist high school student, college student, industry professional, early career professional. If you know that your first generation, you're breaking barriers, you're breaking the glass ceiling in your family and in your generation. We want to support you to continue to do the work. It's nice.
Speaker 1:Now, you mentioned a moment ago about the first cohort. Cohort always messed it up. Cohort of your Grow with Google program and I'm just curious when those folks graduate, how would you actually measure the success of that program? What are some KPIs?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. So, first, what makes our program different than other nonprofits who offer this same benefit in terms of giving folks free access to these certifications? So we offer peer-to-peer support. When you come into our program and when we accept you, you're coming in with a group of individuals who are like-minded, who are also driven and who also want to make sure that we all finish together. That's something that you wouldn't be able to get with other nonprofit organizations or if you were able to do the program on your own, like paid.
Speaker 2:Another thing that we, leaving with a project. That is something that a recruiter or hiring manager or anyone as a technological professional would deem worthy or trustworthy enough to say hey, I can trust you to do this. A lot of also what we do leans into sustainable development. So sustainable tech tech for good. We want to make sure that folks understand that you know you don't have to work in a huge tech company in order to solve the world's greatest problems. You can be in your neighborhood, in your community, and create change.
Speaker 2:So a lot of our projects are based upon the UN Sustainable Goals thing that I would say is we have access to individuals, or I provide access to tech individuals who come into those specific tracks. For instance, let's say, with digital e-commerce and marketing. We're saying, hey, or digital marketing and e-commerce. Hey, here's this professional in our network who is a marketer, a very successful one, for instance, at Google. We want you guys to ask any questions that you may have, lean on them for guidance and advice about how you can apply what you're learning here in the workplace. So we provide them with professionals that they can connect with and also be potential mentors as well. So we measure success specifically by those who are able, like I said, to complete that certification. They're able to submit and complete the project and also are also attending those weekly peer-to-peer support study sessions.
Speaker 1:You really got things covered for sure. Great job. And you know my name is Moses the Mentor, so you know, anytime I see mentor anywhere, you know it just resonates with me because I truly understand the benefit and the power of having a good mentor. It really can expedite your growth in so many different ways. You know it's helped me in my career. It's helped me in my investment career outside of work.
Speaker 1:So I love the fact that mentoring is at the core of your curriculum as well. It's not just, hey, I'm going to give you this coursework, you got to figure it out but you actually partner them with people that are more than willing it sounds like to kind of walk them through the ins and outs, ask questions. I'm sure give you know tough love to when needed. So I'm just curious, like, where did that come from for you? Like, did you have great mentors growing up? Where did that come from for you? Did you have great mentors growing up, or are you pretty much trying to provide for people something that you didn't have? So where did that form for you?
Speaker 2:So my mentors was actually my grandmother and my mom. Growing up, my mom was an amazing and is still an amazing businesswoman, so I learned a lot of her strategy and administrative work and like work ethic to have a level of excellence when you do something, and then also when it comes to just loving on people like you know my mom, but my grandmother she was my mentor when it came to understanding how to serve selflessly, and that's at the core of what I do. A lot of what I did when I was younger on Saturdays. My grandmother was very much in the church of God and Christ. So what do we do on Saturdays? We went to the soup kitchen and we were serving soup, we were serving Kool-Aid and we were passing out tracks and telling people about Jesus, and for me I was like dang, I would rather be at the park with my friends playing double Dutch or like doing, you know, one of the things that you know you would think kids would be doing. But my grandmother, from an early age, told me that life was not about me, it's about the people who I was created to impact, and so I can honestly say that through that, that was my earliest I guess yeah, experiences with mentorship.
Speaker 2:Now, moving on from that, like in my professional career, when I wanted to go into health science, I actually reached out to my first mentor in health sciences, which was Dr Cato Lorenzen. He was and is a chemical engineer. He also was an orthopedic surgeon. He's highly decorated I mean so many different kinds of patents. He's a black man and he's absolutely killing it and I realized at that time I wanted to be amongst the people that he, you know, poured into. So, you know, reached out to him randomly like one night, like who, who thinks like somebody will even respond to you 2am and one night I found him on YouTube and I was like I have to, I have to be in the number, and he responded to me and he actually gave me my first opportunity as a researcher at his research institution. So, shout out to you, dr Lorenzen, I appreciate you. But, yeah, that's how.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I realized, from having the opportunity to see people, because it was hard for me to in school to continue because I was, I was failing classes, I didn't understand, like why I was doing so bad, life at home was so rough, but I realized I had to have something to help me continue to push and see the vision. So when I had my first internship underneath my mentor, dr Lorenzen, I was able to see him in the work, see it be possible for me and ignited a fire in me to say, hey, I can do it. So whatever is hard, whatever feels like it's impossible, it's not impossible because I see somebody who made it possible, and so that's what I wanted to give people Right. Moving forward now, as a within meant to be collective.
Speaker 2:I want for people who feel like it's impossible. I want for people who feel like you know, it can't happen for them, or for people who feel like I don't see anyone who did what I desire to do, so maybe I can't do it. I want for them to dispel all of those lies and words of deceit and defeat and now having individuals who look like them, come from backgrounds like them, have passions like them, have interests like them, and encouraging them to say, hey, you can do it, I did it, but I'm also going to help you get there too. So that's really where it all comes from.
Speaker 1:It's great that you had some great mentors to really help you out through this process. How do people actually become a part of your program? Because I'm sure it has to be some type of selection criteria. You can't accept everybody. I'm sure you want to, but yeah, kind of walk us through the criteria that you look for for the right candidate.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So in that our application, we ask a lot of questions. So one how can this program really benefit you? How do you see yourself transforming in the next three months after this program? What are some of the challenges that you've been facing?
Speaker 2:We have questions around even like if you are a first generation technologist. So that's really the biggest thing, I'll say the biggest outlier. We want to make sure that we are providing space for folks who are first generation, coming from you know different kinds of adverse backgrounds and, again, passionate about doing the work to become a technologist. It's different to say that you're interested and you may want to do it because it's free, but we want to make sure that you're actually going to be committed, which is why we ask those other questions to really get a gauge on how this individual thinks, what they're capable or what they believe they're even capable of Because I can't believe in you more than you believe in yourself and then being able to lean into that and know that I can trust you to not only start but also complete the program.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. You got to have some skin in the game, you know, because this, this is a great work, maybe a good work. This is great work and it's, you know, something that you got to really lean into. So makes sense. So, what's next for me to be collective, what do you have on deck? Or even something that you, like you said you always sound very positive and you kind of you pray a lot on things, that you keep what you really want at the forefront. So what would you want Men To Me, collective to look like in the next few years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see Men To Me, collective being a titan. You know, in the same conversations that we talk about a Google, apple, facebook or Instagram meta. You talk about a Google, apple, facebook or Instagram meta. Basically, I see us leading the charts when it comes to revolutionizing the way that companies or individuals or any corporation that's looking for talent, looking for community, looking to grow.
Speaker 2:I just feel like we're going to be again like an Amazon that is in a little bit of everything. Amazon has groceries, you know. Amazon got the cars. You know what I mean. So I just see us being at the focal of that and also being included in conversations. Hopefully, my desire is that we'll even be a part of the Department of Education at the government level, lobbying and discussing policies when it comes to making sure that it's equitable and the access into not only just tech but just quality education is really seen and felt across the United States. So that's what I see Looking forward to seeing how that continues to transpire, obviously with also being, hopefully in the next five years, on the C-suite as well. But yeah, I just want to be wherever the Lord wants me to be.
Speaker 1:Makes sense. Makes sense what final advice, or just final thoughts, that you have for the, for the audience, and also make sure you leave your best contact information. You know, shout out your website, any social media. Again, thank you so much, chanel, for coming on and you know the floor is yours. Talk us through it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. First of all, thank you for having me. I'm so excited and I can't wait to also rewatch this, so I know it's going to be incredible and super impactful. For those of you who want to continue to stay connected to Method Me Collective, you can connect with us on LinkedIn. We share a multitude of jobs, especially for those who are interested in getting into tech. The cool thing about when we share jobs is that it actually is attached to the recruiter who's actually recruiting for those jobs, or the hiring manager. So if you're applying, you want to hear back and you want to see a human that's attached to it. Please feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn, mentorme Collective. Also, outside of that, you can become a member of our community completely free. We're getting ready to launch a new version or I guess like updated features of our website, so go ahead and visit our website right now to be the first to know about it and become a member, again completely free. Mentormecollectiveorg. Mentormecollectiveorg. You can go ahead and click become a member and you'll be able to do that.
Speaker 2:If you wanna continue to follow me and connect with me, my LinkedIn is also totally available for you to connect with Chanel Power. You'll see like a light bulb and a globe emoji. That would be myself. You can also feel free to shoot me or the organization's email if you're looking for immediate assistance. You're looking for one-on-one coaching. I do provide that as well. I don't do it as often, but for the right candidate, the right person, I feel like we'll be able to benefit from it. It does come at a cost, but if you're interested and you are, you know, in the space where you can invest, you can just go ahead and email me at Chanel at MentorMeCollective. Chanel at MentorMeCollectiveorg.
Speaker 1:Perfect, perfect, and I'll make sure to include all your contact information in the show notes and I hope everybody goes out there and check out MentorMe Collective. It's a great cause and Chanel is a trailblazer, pretty much you know. Do your thing, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Thank you for being awesome as well. Have a great one everybody.
