Latinitas Spring Mentor Program Spotlight: Ingrid Gonzalez Featherston
Latinitas’ Alumni Mentor Program is dedicated to providing Latinitas alumni with professional and academic guidance through the use of a mentor who shares similar backgrounds, experiences, and interests. Ingrid Gonzalez Featherston is a Design Architect at Matt Fajkus Architecture and was able to share her professional knowledge by being a mentor for this program! Learn what she enjoyed the most out of her experience and why she believes in the power of mentoring.
What was your experience like as a mentor?
I had a great experience mentoring! It was an opportunity for me to share what I wish I had known about preparing for college at a design school and to know that it’s okay not knowing everything off the bat. There is only so much you can prepare for, so being able to be flexible when things don’t fall into place was important.
What is the biggest takeaway you’ll have from this experience?
Always share what you know. You can always learn more, but you have to be comfortable with asking questions. No matter if it’s the simplest question ever; there could always be one person in the room who didn’t know that, and now they do. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable, chances are that you will learn more from that experience rather than worrying about how you were perceived.
Why should others be a part of this Mentor Program?
Becoming a mentor is how you create interest and invest in your own profession, if I want my profession to continue to evolve, grow, and become more diverse, then I need to make sure that there are more creative, diverse, and intelligent people coming into the profession. I want people smarter than me coming up so that we can all continue to grow and change the profession for the better. Becoming a mentor is the opportunity to give back what you wish you knew, and to also prepare others for what to expect in their chosen profession, and give them the tools to make it better.
Any additional comments you’d like to include?
I would encourage everyone to become a mentor, it’s not only an opportunity for your mentee to grow and learn but for the mentor, too. Having open lines of communication with people who are joining the profession will only make you have a better understanding of what experiences are shaping them and how that will impact their work ideology. I have a tendency to say yes a lot and hope that it encourages others to do the same. Say yes to being a mentor!
