Recently volunteered with Braven, a career accelerator for promising college students seeking internships. The program was online —- connecting a hundred or so professionals with students over a couple hours. When I was in college, I didn’t get the chance to meet folks like this who could mentor and prepare me for actual job interviews.

A large supply of professionals can step up to become youth mentors and coaches on platforms like Braven that only require internet access. I’m quite familiar with Build.org which is focused on youth entrepreneurship. All forms of youth mentorship can scale when the public/private sectors are willing to sponsor and involve their employees using an online medium. Like Braven, I hope Build scales with an online program of its own.

American society could do more to adapt to the ancient Indian concept called gurukula. The closest thing to this is what happens in the world of sports when a brilliant coach trains acolytes to become coaches themselves. Look forward to volunteering again for Braven.