Your Partner in Growing Your Community

Five Reasons a Mentor is Important to Your Economic Development Career

Seimer SamNo two career paths to economic development look identical. Having a trusted and seasoned colleague to guide you throughout your career path is important to prepare you for success. Whether you are still in school, or in the early stages of your career and seeking a better understanding of working in the industry, MEDA’s Emerging Leaders Network can help you find a mentorship that best fits your goals.

Aside from asking questions and getting advice, here are five unique ways that having a mentor is important to advancing your career in economic development:

1. Confidence Champion

Knowing that you have a credible mentor to turn to when faced with difficult situations and recognizing the good decisions you’ve helps build confidence and allow a mentee to view themselves as an experienced economic developer. When a mentee can see themselves as confident, they will be strong in their decisions and more successful in the field. Additionally, having a mentor means you have a personal champion – someone who will talk you up to others, be your advocate and have your back.

2. Building Relationships

Upon being a personal career champion, a mentor can put you in touch with the right people to help grow your network. The more people you meet, the greater opportunities, and the more people you can turn to for advice in the future. The relationships you make may be the most crucial asset an economic development project.

3. Fresh Perspective

A good mentor helps you understand your strengths and weaknesses from a different perspective. Having a mentor pushes you to improve upon your weaknesses, play into your strengths and accept feedback. Many times mentors open mentees eyes to addressing a situation from a different angle, or how to take a critical look the details of a project. 

4. Unspoken Truths

Culture and implicit rules of an organization can be intimidating when changing career tracts, or just starting off in the field. Think back to your first big networking event, or speaking engagement – nerve-wracking, right? Mentor can help guide you through proper protocol and etiquette for events and meetings which can be critical for success and maintaining your confidence.

5. Knowledge Transfer

This last point of discussion is important to the whole field of economic development. Nearly 10,000 people reach retirement age every day in the United States. As the Baby Boomer workforce retires, many take their strong institutional knowledge with them as they go. However, a strong mentorship program can help insulate economic developers from such a drastic shift in workforce dynamics and insure that knowledge is transferred for decades to come. 

If you are interested in finding a mentor, or becoming a mentor, please visit the Emerging Leaders page on MEDA’s website and click on MEDA Mentorship Connection to learn more.

Authored By: Samantha Seimer, Vice President, Economic Development Services, AKT Peerless Environmental Services. Sam is a Co-Chair for MEDA's Emerging Leaders Committee.

Corporate Investors

Consumers Energy DTE Logo Small
ITC Logo MEDC 2020 Resized
MSHDA vertical TM Plante Moran Realpoint

Contact Us

Michigan Economic
Developers Association
P.O. Box 15096
Lansing, MI 48901-5096
PH: 517-241-0011
cjorae@medaweb.org