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Building Common Ground in Impact Mentoring
Christian Prophete and Angha Gupta discuss the impact of their mentor-mentee relationship with 10KC.
January is National Mentorship Month and Ten Thousand Coffees (10KC) spoke to Christian Prophete and his mentor, Angha Gupta, about their recent experiences in the Impact Mentoring program, a partnership between RBC Future Launch and 10KC designed to increase connectivity between BIPOC youth and industry professionals. Prophete is one of 44 BIPOC-identifying mentees under the age of 30 who were matched with professional mentors using the proprietary 10KC Smart Matching Algorithm. Gupta and Prophete spoke to 10KC about the power of mentorship, how they built common ground to form a strong bond, and the lessons they’ve learned from Impact Mentoring.
A student at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Prophete spent the past year completing a bachelor’s degree in business while working part-time at TD. Finding a mentor was a critical piece missing in his portfolio when thinking about his future goals. “I remember feeling jealous about my best friend having a mentor. It felt like he had this very clear direction and the support outside of family and friends to navigate career and school,” Prophete says. He can thank his wife, a PhD student and an RBC customer, for discovering Impact Mentoring. “She’s very good at finding these opportunities. I started digging into it. Since then, I've been seeing the success and the positive impacts of mentorship.”
His first meeting with Gupta felt structured and formal, but that soon changed. Gupta, an Associate at S&P Global Ratings who holds an MBA from Richard Ivey Business School, has been both a mentee and a mentor throughout her career. She understands how to build new relationships while working toward a common goal. Since that initial meeting, the comfort level with Prophete has grown exponentially. “We spent a lot of time talking about what we're doing, where we’re at, and about what we want out of the program. That helped set the stage for future meetings,” Gupta says. Prophete concurred. After getting to know each other, it’s been smooth sailing ever since. “There was a rapport between us by the second session,” Prophete says. Despite the distance across provinces, “it doesn’t feel like that,” Gupta says. And while they have different interests in the industry — Gupta on the risk management side, Prophete on the sales side — both are driven, positive people focused on having productive meetings. “We’re both here to grow,” he says.
That growth is paying off for Prophete as he charts his next career move — he recently accepted a new internship at Deloitte.
“There are times where I’ve had to ask Angha for her council and advice. She’s good at spelling out her thought process, providing the pros and cons and looking at the bigger picture,” he says.
When Prophete needed help making a big career decision this year, the first person he turned to (after his wife) was Gupta. “I have this internship coming up with Deloitte. One of the clauses is that I can’t be working for TD,” he explains. It was a toss-up — stay in his current position or accept a new opportunity.
“She was the first person I told [about the internship] other than my wife. She helped me make this huge decision,” Prophete says. His relationship with Gupta has been a critical piece of the puzzle as he navigates that critical stage between graduation and entering the workforce. “I try to pick her brain, even though she works in a specific financial field. She’s very insightful. I got lucky. She’s very experienced with mentorship. I really value her opinion. She's someone that cares.”
Gupta lauds Prophete’s attentiveness, responsiveness and how driven he is. Based in Toronto, Gupta says working with a student in Alberta has opened her eyes to the differences across industries in other provinces. “It gives us both a perspective into the different regions across the country.” Gupta has found being a mentor equally rewarding, and she’s gained insight into the challenges new graduates face entering the workforce. “Understanding what's going on now in the industry is different than when I first graduated,” she says. That informs her own career, particularly when it comes to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and gender parity in the male-dominated field she works in. “We need more diversity and inclusion in the industry,” she says.
“Mentorship gives people a head start and a good knowledge base on what works and what doesn't when they're trying to break into an industry.” Gupta says the sky’s the limit for Prophete’s career. “He knows what he wants, and he knows where he wants to go. He just needs the right path to get there.”
About RBC Future Launch
RBC Future Launch is a decade-long commitment to help Canadian youth prepare for a drastically changing workforce, through skills development, networking and work experience. RBC Future Launch is bringing young people together with community leaders, and partners across the private and public sectors to help them prepare for the future of work. The commitment began in 2017 with an investment of $500 million dollars over 10 years.
About 10KC
10KC is a diversity-founded talent experience platform for best-in-class connectivity, mentoring, DEI, onboarding, early talent, leadership development, and more. 10KC’s all-in-one solutions serve over 200 of the world’s leading companies and social impact organizations. Built for the new world of decentralized, remote and hybrid work environments, 10KC’s highly configurable technology helps employers build, scale and measure their employees’ engagement, connectivity and skills development initiatives.
Building Common Ground in Impact Mentoring
Christian Prophete and Angha Gupta discuss the impact of their mentor-mentee relationship with 10KC.
January is National Mentorship Month and Ten Thousand Coffees (10KC) spoke to Christian Prophete and his mentor, Angha Gupta, about their recent experiences in the Impact Mentoring program, a partnership between RBC Future Launch and 10KC designed to increase connectivity between BIPOC youth and industry professionals. Prophete is one of 44 BIPOC-identifying mentees under the age of 30 who were matched with professional mentors using the proprietary 10KC Smart Matching Algorithm. Gupta and Prophete spoke to 10KC about the power of mentorship, how they built common ground to form a strong bond, and the lessons they’ve learned from Impact Mentoring.
A student at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Prophete spent the past year completing a bachelor’s degree in business while working part-time at TD. Finding a mentor was a critical piece missing in his portfolio when thinking about his future goals. “I remember feeling jealous about my best friend having a mentor. It felt like he had this very clear direction and the support outside of family and friends to navigate career and school,” Prophete says. He can thank his wife, a PhD student and an RBC customer, for discovering Impact Mentoring. “She’s very good at finding these opportunities. I started digging into it. Since then, I've been seeing the success and the positive impacts of mentorship.”
His first meeting with Gupta felt structured and formal, but that soon changed. Gupta, an Associate at S&P Global Ratings who holds an MBA from Richard Ivey Business School, has been both a mentee and a mentor throughout her career. She understands how to build new relationships while working toward a common goal. Since that initial meeting, the comfort level with Prophete has grown exponentially. “We spent a lot of time talking about what we're doing, where we’re at, and about what we want out of the program. That helped set the stage for future meetings,” Gupta says. Prophete concurred. After getting to know each other, it’s been smooth sailing ever since. “There was a rapport between us by the second session,” Prophete says. Despite the distance across provinces, “it doesn’t feel like that,” Gupta says. And while they have different interests in the industry — Gupta on the risk management side, Prophete on the sales side — both are driven, positive people focused on having productive meetings. “We’re both here to grow,” he says.
That growth is paying off for Prophete as he charts his next career move — he recently accepted a new internship at Deloitte.
“There are times where I’ve had to ask Angha for her council and advice. She’s good at spelling out her thought process, providing the pros and cons and looking at the bigger picture,” he says.
When Prophete needed help making a big career decision this year, the first person he turned to (after his wife) was Gupta. “I have this internship coming up with Deloitte. One of the clauses is that I can’t be working for TD,” he explains. It was a toss-up — stay in his current position or accept a new opportunity.
“She was the first person I told [about the internship] other than my wife. She helped me make this huge decision,” Prophete says. His relationship with Gupta has been a critical piece of the puzzle as he navigates that critical stage between graduation and entering the workforce. “I try to pick her brain, even though she works in a specific financial field. She’s very insightful. I got lucky. She’s very experienced with mentorship. I really value her opinion. She's someone that cares.”
Gupta lauds Prophete’s attentiveness, responsiveness and how driven he is. Based in Toronto, Gupta says working with a student in Alberta has opened her eyes to the differences across industries in other provinces. “It gives us both a perspective into the different regions across the country.” Gupta has found being a mentor equally rewarding, and she’s gained insight into the challenges new graduates face entering the workforce. “Understanding what's going on now in the industry is different than when I first graduated,” she says. That informs her own career, particularly when it comes to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and gender parity in the male-dominated field she works in. “We need more diversity and inclusion in the industry,” she says.
“Mentorship gives people a head start and a good knowledge base on what works and what doesn't when they're trying to break into an industry.” Gupta says the sky’s the limit for Prophete’s career. “He knows what he wants, and he knows where he wants to go. He just needs the right path to get there.”
About RBC Future Launch
RBC Future Launch is a decade-long commitment to help Canadian youth prepare for a drastically changing workforce, through skills development, networking and work experience. RBC Future Launch is bringing young people together with community leaders, and partners across the private and public sectors to help them prepare for the future of work. The commitment began in 2017 with an investment of $500 million dollars over 10 years.
About 10KC
10KC is a diversity-founded talent experience platform for best-in-class connectivity, mentoring, DEI, onboarding, early talent, leadership development, and more. 10KC’s all-in-one solutions serve over 200 of the world’s leading companies and social impact organizations. Built for the new world of decentralized, remote and hybrid work environments, 10KC’s highly configurable technology helps employers build, scale and measure their employees’ engagement, connectivity and skills development initiatives.
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