Consider This Conceived as a complement to the programs and initiatives of Pennoni Honors College, the Pennoni Panels (P2) speaker series carves out space for engagement with complicated and controversial ideas. Among the panelists at a recent P2 event about mentorship, Valerie Graves, former Chief Creative Officer for such brands as Ford, AT&T, and Pepsi, and author of a new memoir, “Pressure Makes Diamonds,” sat next to her mentee Angela Walker Campbell, a former Executive Creative Director who has now moved into the non-profit sector. Here, they each reflect on what it is to be a mentor and a mentee.
WHO, ME MENTOR? BY VALERIE GRAVES
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efore the day Byron Lewis, founder and CEO of UniWorld Group, tasked me with administering his UniPact Internship Program, there had been precious few opportunities to mentor in my 10-year general market career. I had moved from copywriter to Associate Creative Director,
never working with another African American creative — who might have struck me as a natural mentee — or with any person who saw me, the lone black creative, as being the most influential mentor. This may have been a good thing; 10 years strikes me as a good amount of time to have spent in the business before presuming to show someone else the ropes. Our five interns had been hand-selected for their excellence and potential. They were female and male, came from varying disciplines, and had in common that they’d be spending their internships as outposts of diversity in the mostly-white agency world. My first job as mentor was to figure out what I had to offer them. The most valuable thing turned out to be that I had survived and progressed to the level of creative director in the amusement park we call advertising. They had all entered the profession because it sounded like fun. No one had prepared them for the monotonous carousel of paying dues at the beginning of a career, the hard knocks they should expect from the boss and client bumper cars; the death-defying roller coaster of creating, selling and producing campaigns. Not to mention the ever-present competitiveness and the otherness of being people of color in an overwhelmingly white industry. I shared some basics about how to dismount the corporate merry-go-round, shake off a nasty jolt in the bumper, how to navigate the rowdy, competitive crowd jostling for a spot on the leadership thrill ride. Be exceptional. Be resilient. Be excellent and resourceful. But every career is a different visit to
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