Open Mindset Project's volunteer mentors describe what the experience gives back to them.

Ask Matt McDermott how his semester as a Global Guru went, and he doesn’t hesitate. “This was a wonderful experience.”

Angela O’Riley put it almost as simply, describing mentoring as “great fun.”

Global Gurus are volunteers who give their time to mentor Open Mindset Project students through a structured, four-module global mindset curriculum. They’re accomplished professionals, all with deep industry and global experience, many of them seasoned leaders who've led teams internationally. So, when the Spring 2026 mentors were asked about their own experience, the answers were strikingly positive.

One hundred percent of the Global Gurus who completed the survey were satisfied or very satisfied with their experience, while all respondents said they were likely or highly likely to recommend the Global Guru experience to others. 

Every responding mentor rated the interaction as good or excellent, and every mentor described the student as engaged or highly engaged.

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‍What Global Gurus Said About Their Experience

A Genuinely Good Experience

Ask mentors why it was a good experience, and the answers sound less like survey responses and more like people talking about something they genuinely enjoyed.

“My experience was rewarding. … I think this is an amazing program.”

—Charlene Binder, Global Guru

“I enjoy being a mentor to young college students.”

—Meg Greenhouse, Global Guru

“I thought this was great fun for me and my mentee was so interested and really appreciative of my words and time!”

—Angela O’Riley, Global Guru

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Sonia Vora, comparing notes across two mentees, said she’s found the program “really well organized from a mentor perspective.” For some professionals, mentoring is a chance to put what they have learned over the course of a career to work in a personal, practical way. A career lesson, a hard-earned perspective or a story about navigating a challenge can become useful in a conversation with someone at the beginning of a professional journey.

The value is not only in having something to give. It is also in having a place to use what you have learned. That’s by design: Open Mindset’s mission is meant to serve mentors as much as the students, giving Global Gurus a sense of purpose and a way to share the global experience they’ve spent a career building.

Seeing the Results

The Global Guru role is not about delivering a lecture or having all the answers. It is about bringing professional experience into a real conversation — one where students bring their own questions and perspectives, too, on careers, globalization and what it means to work with people whose experiences differ from their own.

For many mentors, the most rewarding part is watching where that conversation leads. Heather Ficarra noted that “the quality of the experience obviously depends heavily on the engagement and thoughtfulness of the mentee” but when it clicks, mentors say the payoff is real. Ninety-two percent of responding Global Gurus said their mentee showed real progress developing a global mindset over the course of the program, a shift mentors got to witness firsthand. Seeing that kind of change is part of what makes the role worth returning to.

Mentoring, in other words, isn’t only about passing something along. It’s about finding a new use for what you’ve learned and watching it make a difference to someone else. For the Global Gurus of Spring 2026, that appears to have been the reward itself. “Well done first year of Global Guru, Open Mindset program,” Ruth Pojman wrote, “which is more important than ever!”

That kind of change doesn’t happen on its own, though. It asks something real of the student, too. That’s where the next story in this series picks up.

Interested in being a Global Guru? Find out more here.

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NEXT IN THE SERIES

The Courage to Change

A global mindset takes more than awareness. It takes the willingness to question your own assumptions and stay open when another perspective challenges the way you see things.

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