Artina Dawkins
Mentorship is a strong passion of mine along with leadership, and I saw that there was a need to increase support for minoritized individuals, particularly residents and fellows, and I just observed kind of a gap in support. And so it was my aim to fill that gap in support by creation of this mentor program.
So the three pillars of the program are mentor to mentee matching, community engagement, as well as a lecture series. Going from concept, going from abstract, from something that I'm hugely passionate about that I couldn't stop talking about, to a program that's in its sixth year to me is extremely important. It's something I'm very proud of. We started with mentees in four departments and now we have mentees that are represented by 23 departments. You have the younger professional who is a ready recipient for information, and then you have a more experienced person, and so they're able to give guidance, they're able to be a sounding board. They likely have gone through similar, maybe problems or concerns that the younger professional is either in or will go through, and so they're able to give guidance in that respect, as well.
Doctors Charlie Kennedy and Larry Hopkins were just renowned as excellent mentors and really revered in our local area. It made sense that we would name the program after them.
Brenda Latham-Sadler
They served not just as advisors, but they served as mentors. I would not be surprised that they didn't open a lot of doors for the students who were here. And I can't tell you how much more difficult, I think, getting an education at Wake Forest as a black student would've been without having them already there to show us some of the ways to make it through.
Artina Dawkins
The reason why we started the program was to retain the residents and fellows here, but it has grown to a recruitment tool. And there are many who have found out about the program, potential applicants, and they see that there's a program here with people who look like them, and so it's an exciting factor, so it has grown to be a mechanism for recruitment.
So we're always looking for more mentors for the program. I'm a people person and I just love meeting new people, and we always are looking for community to support and teammates. We offer public programming that allows community folks as well as teammates to join, so we definitely are looking for new people. Whoever is interested, we'd love to have you.
