The 2025 Mentorship Program Has Launched: Meet This Year’s Inspiring Cohort!
ASAP’s 2025 Mentorship Program is officially in motion! ASAP is grateful to have a strong cohort of inspiring, ambitious, and diverse professionals across the adaptation and resilience field. From graduate student level to seasoned experts, this year’s cohort is already building momentum toward powerful growth and connection.
A Cohort with Reach and Range
This year’s cohort brings together 15 mentors and 29 mentees, living and working across 15+ U.S. regions and international locations. With several regional concentrations, including the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and Mid-Atlantic, cohort participants have had opportunities for in-person gatherings.
Both mentors and mentees bring an incredible mix of experience and backgrounds across academia, consulting, all levels of government (local to tribal), nonprofits, for-profits, and independent research institutions. In addition to mentees at the graduate student, junior, and entry-career levels, this cohort also includes several mentees at the mid-career level seeking new direction and deeper impact.
New Program Feature: Speaker Series
The program team is excited to offer the cohort a speaker series that will give insight into navigating career building in the adaptation and resilience field. Through panels, lightning talks, and roundtable discussions, the series will support mid-career professionals and individuals navigating career transitions, as well as early-career mentees.
The first Speaker Series session in late April featured a panel of ASAP members and past mentorship program participants sharing their career journeys, reflecting how they have deepened their expertise, shifted directions, and grown their impact in the evolving adaptation field. Upcoming session topics include:
- Leveraging data and technology to support adaptation projects
- Specific project features
- Navigating career uncertainties
- The future of the adaptation professional sector
Professional Guidance Resources
The nine-month program emphasizes co-creation, initiative, and reflection. Mentees are encouraged to lead one-on-one or small group meetings with their mentor, empowered by resources that help them clarify their goals, track progress, and share insights with confidence.
Through ASAP’s Professional Guidance resources, participants get access to documents to support pairs and groups for:
- Goal setting and tracking
- Building meaningful networking
- Recognizing the value of lived experiences and professional insights to articulate their goals clearly
The Mentorship Program Team also collaborates with ASAP’s Professional Opportunities in Adaptation Affiliated Group to offer the cohort additional, complementary engagement opportunities. We are thrilled to have a couple of Mentorship Program participants join the group’s leadership team.
Going Deeper: Cultural Humility
In response to feedback from past participants, this year the Program Team is deepening its commitment to inclusion by sharing resources and introductory discussions on cultural humility. Cultural humility, an expansion of the term cultural competence, has been described as “an ongoing process of self-reflection and self-critique” and “entails acknowledging difference and positioning ourselves as people interested in learning and understanding” (Source: Richards-Desai, S., Lewis, L. (2016) Conversations about Culture: The Importance of Cultural Humility).
Mentees and mentors have identified power dynamics, language, and building allyship as key focus areas for this year’s mentorship experience. This pilot effort lays the groundwork for a more robust integration of cultural humility in future programming.
Why They Joined: Voices from the 2025 Cohort
As part of the program’s launch, we asked participants to share why they chose to join this program. Here’s a glimpse into what brought this year’s cohort to the program.
Mentors shared:
“As the world continues to evolve, it is crucial that we learn from each other’s challenges, strategies, and successes. By sharing my experiences, I hope to guide the next group in developing their own resilience and adaptability, helping them thrive in a constantly shifting environment.”
“…working specifically with the ASAP mentors program, I’ve seen how it can catalyze the career of a mentee from early struggles to solid landings in new positions to advancing their caree,r becoming not only a continuing and active ASAP member, but a leader in the field.”
“I was in [a] previous cohort…as a mentee, and I found it extremely valuable for me both personally and professionally…I want to give back and serve as a Mentor this year, where I hope to provide wisdom and expertise I can to a mentee in this field to support their personal and professional goals.”
“There’s a lot to learn from early career professionals with different outlooks and more specialized education, and I hope to help new names, faces, and ideas enter and enrich the adaptation field; we need all the help we can get!”
Mentees shared:
“I am specifically seeking an ASAP mentor because I am less comfortable with climate adaptation topics than emissions mitigation topics at this point in my career and would like to become a more well-rounded professional.”
“I hope that working with a mentor will allow me to expand my network…as well as to help in building a supportive national network of both climate and environmental justice professionals that aim to spread positive change and move the world forward in the fight against climate change.”
“By having a mentor through the ASAP program, I will be a more effective consultant in the climate space and garner expertise independent from the confirmation bias of my current role.”
“I switched careers mid-life, and I got my PhD during the pandemic. Due to the pandemic, I did not have opportunities to attend conferences or do any meaningful networking and connect with others in my new field…It would be great to have a mentor who could help me navigate…finding ways I can become more active in the adaptation science community.”
Onward!
Thank you to everyone in this year’s cohort for their engagement, insights, and commitment so far. We are excited to see how these connections evolve and flourish throughout the remainder of the program.
Stay tuned for more updates and stories from the cohort later this year! This is just the beginning!