Design Mentorship at Morningstar
Strengthening the Design Community Through Meaningful Connections
Role — Head of Committee
Interested in running your own program? Check out my templates at the bottom of this page.
Building a Stronger Design Community Through Mentorship
In 2020, the Communications Working Group (where I was also committee member! 😊) shared key findings to improve organizational sentiment, including a major lack of mentorship or growth opportunities. Pulse survey scores also revealed low satisfaction with the design community—exacerbated by the shift to remote work. One solution: create a formal mentorship program outside the company-wide initiative, which wasn’t tailored for improving design craft skills.
At Morningstar there are over 100 designers globally, so the community was sitting there ready for this initiative, but needed someone to take it on. A dedicated manager took the initiative to create a design mentorship program, and in its first year, my committee member role was to design the sign-up process. Near the program’s end, my love for gathering insights led me to propose a feedback survey. It was a hit! The responses highlighted the need for more mentor education, structured check-ins, and better support.
Scaling and Improving the Program
The next year, I stepped up as head of the committee. Our biggest challenges as seen through the surveys were mentor burn out and lack of education. I set out to refine the program by:
✅ Introducing regular group check-ins with mentors to share tips and direct outreach to mentees
✅ Building a SharePoint resource hub for easy access to program details
✅ Partnering with the corporate mentorship team to provide mentor training materials
Those changes were incredibly successful and our rates of satisfaction went up 13%. I’ve now run 5 mentorship programs, running 4 to 6 months out of the year. Participation rates are roughly 20+ pairings a program. As a part of onboarding, managers now reach out to me to get their new hire into the program if they missed the sign up deadlines, and I’ll often match up mentee candidates one-off during an off-program part of the year.
A large part of the program hinges on understanding the strengths of potential mentors, so I spent much of the early program years coffee chatting with senior leaders getting buy in, while also keeping notes on their skills, so I can better match them with a mentee. I also rely on a couple super-tenured designers at Morningstar who have been there for 15+ years and invite them to the “Match-a-thon” — a 45 minute meeting where I put all the mentees and mentors on sticky notes with their strengths and growth areas and match them.
Making a lasting impact
The program gained corporate recognition as a model for other function-specific mentorship initiatives, and I even participated in a company-wide workshop to improve mentorship practices. Creating a thriving design community is something I’m deeply passionate about, and leading this mentorship program has been one of my most rewarding contributions. I want your company to have a thriving design community too! I created company agnostic templates for you to use that match what I currently use. This g-drive folder includes:
Program resources and suggested charter
Sign up forms for mentor and mentee
Email templates for all communication: program beginning, matches, check-ins, and ending
Feedback forms to improve your program
