Thurgood Marshall College Fund Provides Scholarship Winners with Career Advancing Mentorships

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08/10/2022 - 09:09 AM

Wells Fargo and Mentor Collective Team Up to Create
Lasting Socioeconomic Change for HBCU Students

BOSTON, Aug. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Wells Fargo and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) have announced the winners for this year's College Completion Scholarship Program. Awarded to a minimum of two hundred (200) senior scholars attending TMCF-member schools, the spring scholarship provides up to $5,000 for the 2021-22 academic year and career mentorship from leading large-scale mentorship program provider Mentor Collective. A full list of winners and their schools can be downloaded here.

Social and financial capital are essential to helping college students graduate and transition into a fulfilling career

Established to honor the U.S. Supreme Court's first African-American justice, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund partners with organizations like Wells Fargo and Mentor Collective to help provide access to a high-quality college education while connecting high-performing, world-ready students with top-tier employment opportunities.

"None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody – a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns – bent down and helped us pick up our boots." - Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall

Critical to the College Completion Scholarship Program is a mentorship component facilitated by Mentor Collective. Mentor Collective applies scholarly research on mentorship to purposefully match each scholarship winner with a professional mentor at Wells Fargo. A 2021 study found that young adults with career mentors experienced greater career enhancement and reported higher levels of well-being in the short and long term. Additional research performed across over 700 students in Mentor Collective's programs also show significant improvements in retention and sense of belonging; namely that peer mentorship influenced an average 5.67% increase in year-over-year retention. These results were considerably more profound when students had 3+ conversations with their mentor (average 11.8% increase in retention and 13.39% increase in sense of belonging).

"Social and financial capital are two essential components necessary to help students graduate and transition their learning into a fulfilling career," said Gigi Dixon, Wells Fargo head of external engagement for Diverse Segments, Representation, and Inclusion. "We are honored to play a role in empowering the next graduating class with both financial and networking assistance. Through the Mentor Collective program, these scholarship recipients will be paired with a Wells Fargo employee to help them navigate the professional landscape beyond their post-secondary career."

"Through our research and experience with career readiness programs, we've found that mentorship at this formative time before graduation not only better prepares students for academia or the workforce, it contributes to significant upward movement on the socioeconomic strata," said Jackson Boyar, Co-Founder and CEO of Mentor Collective. "Wells Fargo has been an incredible partner in helping Mentor Collective reach students with the most to gain from life-changing relationships, and we look forward to seeing the impact an initiative like this can make."

Wells Fargo's Senior Lead Diversity & Inclusion Consultant Dewey Norwood, Jr. will be conversing with other senior leaders across higher education on August 11th about equitable career outcomes at Mentor Collective's next virtual roundtable event. He is joined by leaders from The University of Delaware and Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce.

About The Thurgood Marshall College Fund

Established in 1987, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) is the nation's largest organization exclusively representing the Black College Community. TMCF member-schools include the publicly-supported Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs). Publicly-supported HBCUs enroll over 80% of all students attending HBCUs. Through scholarships, capacity building and research initiatives, innovative programs, and strategic partnerships, TMCF is a vital resource in the K-12 and higher education space. The organization is also a source for top employers seeking top talent for competitive internships and good jobs.

About Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a leading financial services company that has approximately $1.9 trillion in assets, proudly serves one in three U.S. households and more than 10% of small businesses in the U.S., and is a leading middle market banking provider in the U.S. We provide a diversified set of banking, investment and mortgage products and services, as well as consumer and commercial finance, through our four reportable operating segments: Consumer Banking and Lending, Commercial Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking, and Wealth & Investment Management. Wells Fargo ranked No. 41 on Fortune's 2022 rankings of America's largest corporations. In the communities we serve, the company focuses its social impact on building a sustainable, inclusive future for all by supporting housing affordability, small business growth, financial health, and a low-carbon economy.

News, insights, and perspectives from Wells Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo Stories.

Additional information may be found at www.wellsfargo.com | Twitter: @WellsFargo

About Mentor Collective

Mentor Collective—the leading provider of high-impact, large-scale mentorship programming in higher education—is a collective of institutions and thought leaders dedicated to closing the opportunity gap through mentorship. Founded in 2014, Mentor Collective has delivered 700+ unique mentorship programs, established 160+ institutional partnerships, and formed 200,000 mentoring relationships through expert-led research, services, and technology. As an impact-first investment of the Lumina Foundation, Mentor Collective partners with forward-thinking institutions that are committed to equity, inclusion, and relationship-centered education.