MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership has named WilmerHale to its 2019 National Corporate Mentoring Honor Roll, which recognizes 61 companies for their commitment to connecting young people with career opportunities they might otherwise not be able to access. 

“Youth mentoring is a true community effort at WilmerHale,” says Public Service Manager Anne Bowie, who manages the firm’s youth-mentoring programs. Across the firm’s US offices, nearly 200 employees volunteer to work with young people in a variety of ways. 

In Boston, volunteers conduct college essay and career training workshops with students from Cathedral High School and Hyde Square Task Force, and they nurture a small group of student interns through the office’s annual Summer Leadership Institute. In Boston and Palo Alto, employees teach middle school students about the legal profession by ushering them through mock trial programs sponsored by Citizen Schools and Discovering Justice. In Washington DC, volunteers tutor students from Maya Angelou Public Charter Schools at weekly sessions throughout the year. And across the firm’s US offices, promising young adults gain technical and corporate experience in internships sponsored by Year Up.

MENTOR, a nonprofit that supports a network of mentoring programs in the United States, launched its Corporate Mentoring Honor Roll in 2011 in partnership with former First Lady Michelle Obama. Honor Roll members “know that mentoring is a key strategy to connecting youth to social and economic opportunities while building a strong 21st century workforce,” according to the organization. “And most importantly, they walk the walk.”