The List announces winner of diversity campaign competition

In late September, the mentees of The List's pilot mentorship program Generation Next gathered virtually to present their final projects: marketing campaigns that would spread the message of the value of using mentorship to improve the diverse talent crisis in the industry using the most creative and innovative tools and tech available. 

The projects were the culmination of the inaugural year of Generation Next, almost a year to the day after The List—the group of advertising, marketing and media leaders assembled by Ad Age in partnership with Facebook—announced plans to create a mentorship program aimed at mid-career professionals (those with three to five years of experience) of diverse and underrepresented backgrounds. After several months of work, four groups of mentees pitched their campaigns to a panel of List judges. The prize: the opportunity to share the winning idea during a special panel—"Leveling Up: Why Diverse Mentorship Programs Can Bridge the Gap to True Equity and Inclusion"—in The Female Quotient's Virtual Equality Lounge at Advertising Week New York on Monday, Oct. 18, at 10:30 a.m. ET. 

After the group presentations, the judges panel met separately to discuss the merits of each campaign idea. Although each group offered unique insights into the value of diverse mentorship and innovative proposals on how to communicate that message to the industry at large, one idea emerged as the victor: The List is proud to announce that the winner of the Generation Next 2021 project competition is group 2—which dubbed itself Team Change Agents—and its pitch for Ship It, an app that connects mentors and mentees. Congratulations!

Congratulations are also in order not just to all the teams, whose members and projects are outlined below, but to all the members of The List, the Ad Age team and our partners at Facebook and Facebook Elevate, and everyone else who volunteered their expertise and hard work to launch Generation Next—especially Management Leadership for Tomorrow and the Asian American Advertising Federation.

The long and winding road  

The realization of the mentorship program affects not one but two classes of The List. Way back in early February of last year, the 2020 edition of The List met for the first time at The Modern in New York to choose its core mission for the upcoming year. After discussing various issues affecting the industry and society, including climate change and equitable family leave policies (the mission of the 2019 List), the incoming cohort quickly and unanimously decided to dedicate the year’s efforts to tackling unconscious bias and improving diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. 

The subject of unconscious bias and the continuing failure of the industry at large to confront the diverse talent crisis, especially the lack of BIPOC senior leaders, inspired a vigorous discussion. The members dispersed after this inaugural meeting determined to come up with an actionable plan that could effect real change.

And then 2020 happened.

COVID-19 turned the entire country upside down, and as businesses and people gathered their wits and figured out to exist in and deal with the creeping fear of the new normal, List members' ambitious plans were put on hold. Initially, the pandemic followed by the social justice protests against systemic racism and police brutality against Black people in the wake of George Floyd's murder seemed like a one-two punch that could threaten The List's plans for 2020 indefinitely.

But when The List re-gathered—virtually for the first time—in late April, it was quickly apparent that the news had only steeled members' resolve to continue. The pandemic disruption and the social justice movement brought the core issues behind The List's DE&I mission even further into relief. The group soon decided that the best way to address the industry's diverse talent crisis was to create a mentorship program that specifically aimed at BIPOC professionals with three to five years of experience—which multiple members had identified as the group of diverse workers most at risk of dropping out of the workforce due to lack of opportunities of moving up the senior management ladder. 

With that, the seeds of the Generation Next mentorship program were planted. On Oct. 8, 2020, The List announced the creation of a pilot mentorship program, and on Oct. 21, reps from the group unveiled the ideas and goals behind the program at AWNewYork 2020. As The List began planning the program and seeking partnerships with industry groups to help recruit mentees, late 2020 was on the verge of becoming 2021—and time for Ad Age and Facebook to select a new class for The List.

The List 2020, Ad Age and Facebook agreed that the mission was too important to abandon midstream, so the 2021 cohort was recruited with the idea that they would continue to work toward building and launching the mentorship program, which they agreed to do wholeheartedly. Many core members of the 2020 List agreed to stay on throughout 2021 and continued to be leaders in creating and running the program. (One 2019 List member was so excited when she heard about the program that she asked to rejoin the group.)

The program, in which members of The List partnered with MLT and the 3AF to match mentors with early to mid-career industry professionals from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds, officially launched in April. 

In addition to one-on-one mentoring sessions, The List consulted with Facebook Elevate to build a rich curriculum of educational content for the mentees. Mentees also have the opportunity to participate in exclusive private fireside chats with List members and mentors as well as experience industry events, including taking part in Ad Age's "Generation Next" streaming live video series and special List-related Facebook Elevate webinars such as the conversation between List members (and friends) Whitney Headen, co-founder and CEO of 19th & Park, and Shannon Jones, co-founder of Verb and a Q&A with List member Harry Román-Torres, chief brand strategy officer of Droga5.

For The List's panel in TFQ's Virtual Equality Lounge at AWNewYork, Natalie Gatbonton of Team Change Agents will be joined by her fellow Generation Next mentees Glenys Fernandez, senior manager of global brand marketing for InterContinental Hotels Group's Atwell Suites; brand marketer Ashley Mackel Beresford; and Joel Salgado, an MBA candidate at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Gatbonton will discuss the details of her team's winning pitch, while Fernandez, Mackel Beresford and Salgado will share their teams' best insights. Natalie Zfat, contributing editor of Ad Age Studio 30, and Brandi Pitts, global head of digital marketing and partnerships at Facebook, will moderate. 

Shipping the mentor-mentee relationship

Team Change Agents: Natalie Gatbonton, senior analyst, marketing, at American Express; Emilio Jimenez Gopar, account manager at Pinterest; Devante London, executive assistant to the CEO at 19th & Park Inc.; Onix Nava, graduate student at Northwestern University and operations fellow at Management Leadership for Tomorrow; and Melanie Salamat, video content producer at Balanced Health 

The winning team addressed a seemingly obvious idea that many think, but don’t often say: Networking is awkward. 

Every young professional has been told about the importance of networking, but they aren’t often given the tools needed to network effectively or made to understand the value those connections actually provide.

Taking their inspiration from dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, which help people deal with the awkwardness of another type of social encounter, Team Change Agents' Ship It, a mentor-mentee matching app, aims to make the first step easier.

Ship It is a way for early-career and seasoned professionals to connect based on shared interests, career paths or industry relationships using what the group describes as “a more casual and friendly approach to mentoring.” Mentees seeking a mentor and mentors open to taking on a mentee can browse the database and review the profiles served to them by the app’s algorithm. If the person is not a match for their needs, they can select “not a match” (similar to the “swipe left” function on Tinder). If both parties are interested in connecting, they can send a coffee chat invite to get to know each other a bit better. If they are interested but not quite ready to connect, they can save their profile to return to in the future.  

“Our Ship It campaign hopes to raise awareness and drive home how important mentorship is,” said Team Change Agents member Melanie Salamat. “It includes a pathway that eases friction with networking, and it creates an equal access platform for mentors and mentees to be able to bring a more casual, friendly, but still authentic self.” 

Their hope is that by creating an accessible platform that demystifies networking, it will open doors for young, underrepresented professionals to nurture those relationships that will shape their careers and ultimately change the face of the industry. 

“We don’t see people in leadership roles who look like us,” said team member Devante London, but Team Change Agents envisions a different future. 

The missing links to mentorship

Team Missing Links: Michelle Almeida, MBA candidate, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Glenys Fernandez, senior manager, global brand marketing, Atwell Suites, InterContinental Hotels Group; Nikki Jenkins, manager, content strategy and analysis, Netflix; Victoria Powell, consumer insight senior analyst, Disneyland Resorts; Kimberly Punzalan, digital marketing manager, LinkedIn; and Maria Valvidia, marketing analyst, PepsiCo

Group 1 focused their campaign on what they identify as “the missing links.” After putting their heads together and comparing experiences, they found that the missing links between young, underrepresented professionals and mentorship opportunities are: belonging, community and awareness. 

“I am a Filipino child of immigrants, and a mentor told me that my voice is a powerful tool," Team Missing Links member Kimberly Punzalan said. "And it reminded me that when I spoke up, I was able to advocate for my community and for those that didn’t have a seat at the table.” 

Each initiative in their campaign would forge these missing links, such as planning speed-networking events to initiate relationships between possible mentor-mentee matches, develop mentorship framework guides that can help optimize the value of the mentorship for the mentor and mentee, and identifying an annual rising stars list of young industry talent from diverse backgrounds who are already making waves in their companies. 

Navigating the messy middle

Team Mentorship Matters: Khari Austin-Rawls, senior manager, ESPN+ subscriber acquisition and engagement, The Walt Disney Company; Rafiat Kasumu; MBA candidate, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Jourdan Henry, MBA candidate, Harvard Business School; Ashley Mackel Beresford, brand marketer; and Eunice Pak, data strategist, Wieden + Kennedy

There is a near universal experience among all generations, in which people find themselves walking the fine line between advancing their career and paying more care and attention to their personal life. Group 3, Team Mentorship Matters, referred to the dilemma as “the messy middle.” Their hope is to help the Gen Z workforce navigate this personal and professional phase before those inevitable life challenges become preoccupations. To break through these barriers is what they define as “level up mentoring,” or how mentors can help minority professionals step up to the next level in their careers, while also mentoring them through the challenges of building both a life and a career. 

"Our idea is, it's time to level up," said team member Rafiat Kasumu. "What are things that people need to do in order to reach the next bar within their personal careers? And our campaign is completely focused on encouraging underrepresented professionals in media, advertising and marketing to learn more about mentorship through our resources, but also to gain early access to the Generation Next program."

The team's “It’s Time to Level Up!” campaign would target young minority professionals to complete a series of social media tasks, and engaging with these activations would grant them early access and priority application consideration for the Generation Next mentoring program.

Leveling up and paying it forward

Team Level Up: Kyndall Ashe, regional account manager, global clients program, talent and learning solutions, LinkedIn; Kathryn Brown, senior business architect, Adobe; Sung-Un Choe, marketing coordinator, Crossings TV; Joel Salgado; MBA candidate, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University; Shyanne Yellowbird, associate account executive/strategic partner sales, Amazon Web Services; and Natalie S. Vazquez, NBC News digital audience development page, NBCUniversal

Echoing Team Mentorship Matters, group 4 also aims to help young professionals level up in their careers, but this time with a two-pronged approach targeted at both mentees and mentors. 

“One hypothesis that we had was that there wasn’t a lot of awareness of the problem, of the issue," said Team Level Up member Kathryn Brown. "We found that that’s actually not true. Particularly in the last year or so, there’s been a lot of conversation in our respected workplace environments about the importance of mentorship, especially for underrepresented groups. We found that mentors were very willing to sign up and to take on potential mentees, but oftentimes those who were raising their hands have low bandwidth because they tend to be the ones who do these types of things. So we thought, how can we make sign-up and engagement in the mentorship program as easy as possible for both parties?" 

The “pay it forward” aspect of the campaign would target the wealth of qualified mentors in the industry, including The List's Generation Next mentors, to participate in a social campaign called the #PayItForwardChallenge, in which they would share positive testimonials about their experiences as mentors. To take it one step further, the campaign would direct interested mentor candidates to a landing page where they can learn more about the benefits of mentorship and sign up to offer their time as a mentor in the Generation Next program. 

The mentee-focused “level up” aspect of the campaign focuses on three primary barriers to entry when it comes to finding a mentor: not having a network, little industry experience and feeling like an outsider. Here, young professionals would leverage similar social challenges educating their audience about the importance of mentorship, more targeted toward the taste of Gen Z (hello, TikTok) to educate early-career minority professionals and college students preparing to enter the workforce. This too would direct these young mentee candidates to learn more about the Generation Next program. 

#GenerationNext and what's next

The level of insightfulness and innovation among this year’s class of mentees drew raves from the attendees, which included List members and partners.

"This has been such an enriching experience to work hand-in-hand with these mentees," said List member Whitney Headen. "They're such amazing, bright people coming together."

“The work that has been done has really inspired me to look at my own career and figure out ways to scale the things I’ve learned here," added Alena Chiang, Facebook's global marketing solutions industry marketing manager.

Learn more about The List's winning and runner-up projects, as well as The List’s Generation Next mentorship program, in the Female Quotient's Virtual Equality Lounge at AWNewYork on Monday, Oct. 18, at 10:30am ET. Register and RSVP here. 

For more news, visit The List's vertical on AdAge.com and website AdAgeTheList.com, and follow The List on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Email [email protected] for more information.