Creating Community
Through Mentorship

Bridge Builders: Learning Together

Reverse mentorship can foster authentic dialogue, meaningful relationships, and stronger bonds across generations and communities. This belief underpins our Bridge Builders program, which we founded in 2021. This unique reverse mentoring program pairs high-performing associates of color with each member of Baird’s Executive Committee. In this role, the associate serves as the mentor and to an executive leader.

The program, which launches its fifth cohort in 2025, aims to provide associate-mentors with a meaningful opportunity to engage and build relationships with Baird leaders, while executive-mentees are expected to engage in impactful conversations with their mentors about the life experiences that have influenced their journey and perspectives as both individuals and professionals of color. The goal is to build shared awareness and sensitivity, engage in authentic conversation and build what we hope to be longer-term relationships.

Bridge Builders is an incredible opportunity to partner with a senior executive who has a strong desire and willingness to do things which benefit others. My mentee is a role model in being open and vulnerable, and I enjoyed our conversations about how to celebrate and leverage differences.

At the very beginning of the program, I felt comfortable having authentic conversations with my mentee. I’m so glad he was open and willing to learn and didn’t treat this as a program to ‘check the box’ and move on. That was my biggest hesitation when going in this program. I can see my mentee and I keeping the conversations going and being close friends going forward.

Our firmwide program inspired similar programs in several of our business units and Corporate Resource Groups. Each program creates meaningful opportunities for all participants. Associate-mentors gain the opportunity to engage and build relationships with our leaders, while executive-mentees continue their inclusion & diversity journey with real-life perspective.

Prism Connections: Building Strong Bonds

Opportunities to network can create powerful mentorship opportunities. Our Prism Connections program strives to create connections that lead to such opportunities. This networking program, which celebrates its fifth anniversary in 2025, is led by our Prism Associate Resource Group. It creates networking opportunities designed to connect associates of underrepresented ethnicities with experience leaders and one another. Together, the participants gain and share insights on how to navigate and build careers at Baird.

The program participants join small cohorts that are pairs with firm leaders. The combined groups come together several times throughout the course of about one year to discuss topics like mentorship, sponsorship and career progression. The goal is to create a meaningful experience for participants so they can emerge from the program with a strong network of peers they can rely on within Baird and an expanded, improved sense of how to navigate Baird as an associate of an underrepresented ethnicity.

Navigating an unfamiliar professional landscape can be intimidating; that anxiety can sometimes be accentuated as a young adult of color. Having the chance to connect with the members of my cohort was rewarding and reassuring for me on both a professional and personal level. On top of that, our leaders demonstrated genuine care and interest in us as people, not just associates. I will carry the shared experiences and lessons learned as a part of Connections moving forward in my career.

We believe every one of associates matter, and all are equally important members of the Baird community. This belief is central to our Associate Promise and Inclusion & Diversity Statement.