Building Connections That Advance Careers

Since opening in 2021, Cleveland Clinic’s Mentoring Resource Center has played a pivotal role in helping caregivers learn and advance their careers.

“The center’s goal is to raise awareness about what mentoring entails, use mentoring as a catalyst for professional growth and create a repository of mentors,” says Elizabeth Kohler, Senior Learning and Collaboration Architect in the Caregiver Office.

The Mentor Directory serves as a central hub for connections across Cleveland Clinic, featuring nearly 460 volunteer mentors from a range of disciplines and roles. Caregivers can search profiles based on factors such as skills, expertise, location, department and title to identify mentors who align with their professional development goals.

Currently, more than 850 caregivers are mentor and mentee members of the Mentoring Resource Center. Participants praise the program.

“My mentor and I have talked about starting a leadership journey, creating engaged teams, meeting fellow caregivers where they are, closed-loop communication and taking small steps to build a snowball effect of positivity,” shared one mentee in a participant survey. “I’ve learned so many ways to lead from where I am and how to seek growth opportunities.”

New mentoring initiatives

Kohler emphasizes that caregivers are always learning, changing and evolving – and so is the Mentoring Resource Center. She highlights several new initiatives designed to bolster mentoring partnerships, education and employee resources across the enterprise. They include:

Mentor-specific software platform – The center is piloting MentorCloud, a robust AI-enabled platform that matches mentor-mentee pairs, streamlines communication and scheduling among pairs, and tracks the mentorship journey.

“We intend to continue finding innovative ways to facilitate interpersonal connections and offer a process that is more automated and intuitive,” says Kohler.

Career Path Mentoring Circles – In February, the Mentoring Resource Center began collaborating with Cleveland Clinic’s Career Journeys Group to offer Career Path Mentoring Circles, a monthly, peer-based program that helps employees build career roadmaps while strengthening their current performance. Participants join a circle based on one of four professional pathways – enrichment, exploratory, lateral or vertical – based on their near- to mid-term aspirations.

The circles are facilitated by trained mentors/moderators who guide the discussion and ensure accountability through action items and progress check-ins.

Angela Taveras, Learning and Collaboration Technology Analyst with the Caregiver Office, leads the Enrichment Path Mentoring Circle, which focuses on technical and professional skill development, stretch assignments and project leadership opportunities.

“The circle is a safe space for having conversations focused on achieving individual goals and expanding our collective impact as caregivers,” she adds.

Center for Youth and College Education (CYCE) – CYCE provides students from kindergarten through college an avenue for exploring healthcare careers, including school-based programs, shadowing experiences, internships and more. The Mentoring Resource Center is partnering with CYCE to match Cleveland Clinic mentors with students.

Mentoring community for nurse leaders – Although there is value in receiving guidance from caregivers across disciplines, Kohler says role-specific mentoring is sometimes required. The Nurse Leader Mentoring Resource Center was established in 2025 as a component of the Nurse Leadership Academy (NLA). Mentoring is one component of the NLA, along with professional development, experiential learning, peer connection and shadowing, and talent and succession planning.

Future developments

The Mentoring Resource Center aims to expand its educational offerings. The center currently hosts bimonthly group orientation sessions for mentors/mentees and a quarterly learning series.

This year, the series focuses on creating impactful mentoring meetings and partnerships. In addition, the center recently began hosting monthly fireside chats for mentees and mentors in the MentorCloud platform. The first fireside chat – “Office Hours for Mentees” – was held in late July.

“We’re proud to provide a central location where caregivers can explore the resources available to them,” says Kohler. “We’ve created a growth-focused environment that allows individuals to form mentoring partnerships, attend educational sessions to improve the quality of those relationships and find answers to their questions.”