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Commentary: Economy in flux, but value of mentor remains

By Vincent Fraley As the Class of 2016 transforms into the latest crop of young professionals joining the workforce, forgive them any bewilderment.

By Vincent Fraley

As the Class of 2016 transforms into the latest crop of young professionals joining the workforce, forgive them any bewilderment.

Economists make much of today's shifting business headwinds, so millennials are understandably unsure of what type of economy they are entering.

There's Airbnb and the "share" economy; Uber and the "gig" economy; China and the "command" economy. The gurus of Silicon Valley and their hoodie mantras have upended traditional models of management, opening up communal workspaces as quickly as they tear down hierarchies.

However, throughout this torrent of change, one constant has held firm: the value of a mentor.

Or has it?

For millennials, this is particularly mystifying. Should one seek out a mentor? In today's culture of energetic DIY entrepreneurialism, has a mentor's value depreciated? If business practices and consumer trends have changed so much - and continue to change so rapidly- has the search for a mentor become anachronistic, like a squire in search of a nonexistent knight?

Yours truly is a member of this much-maligned cohort of 18- to 35-year-olds. However, in the form of Page Talbott, president and CEO of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) since 2013 - who will be leaving this summer to resume her consultancy, Talbott Exhibits & Planning - the answer was made clear: Mentors have the ability to do nothing less than change one's life.

A Bible-Belter by birth, I arrived in Philadelphia in 2013 without knowing a soul or what I wanted to do with my life. Like many coming of age in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis, I enrolled in graduate school to bide time until the job-market shook off its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hangover.

However, it was not until I volunteered - on a whim - for an unpaid internship at HSP that my real education began under Talbott's tutelage.

A mentor does more than fill in the voids disregarded by university curricula, though these are perhaps the first deficiencies corrected: When to speak up in meetings and, more importantly, when to keep quiet. How to navigate the plethora of personalities found among even the smallest staffs. How to build relationships in a crowded field when the number of institutions seeking support increases as the number of funders decreases.

But mentors do more than instruct; they inspire. They put in plain evidence the opportunity for work to become far more than something one dedicates 40 hours a week to before mentally "clocking out." They make clear - by example - that no task, however small, deserves less than one's full effort.

They demonstrate that there more often exists a coincidence - rather than conflict - of interest among staff and stakeholders, and that one should always seek this out, however hidden. They provide a vision that animates and unites those they work with. They inculcate in their coworkers a sense of mission and service, removing that first flush of dread often accompanying the shrill peals of 8 a.m. alarms. They generate morale like mints print money. They prove, in short, that it is possible to be a complete human being in the workplace, to be both ambitious and compassionate.

As president and CEO, Talbott administered HSP's collection of more than 20 million manuscript pages. Most of these materials are found nowhere else in the world. To those who have had the pleasure to call her a mentor, Talbott is not different from the pages in the collection: She is truly unique.

Her poise, passion, and pluck will be forever stored in the libraries of memory her coworkers take home with them each night. And should - God help us - any of these currently young professionals become presidents or mentors themselves someday, they could not ask for a better standard to strive for.

Vincent Fraley is the communications manager for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. vincent.c.fraley@gmail.com