Welcome to Statera Mentorship

The next Statera Mentorship class has yet to be announced. We hope that the spirit of mentorship is embraced and nourished beyond formal launch dates or programs. The most important aspect of this program is and always will be to disrupt isolation, and choose collaboration over competition.

To stay informed about the future of the program, please subscribe to the Statera Newsletter.

Mentorship is at the core of Statera's mission of creating pathways that bring women and non-binary people into full and equal participation in the arts. A flourishing mentor relationship helps both mentor and mentee organize their professional challenges, nurture their creative ideas and activate their personal gifts. 

Statera works to connect artists interested in moving beyond the very real obstacles that sometimes lie between our goals and our opportunities. The most effective way to grow, expand and manifest change is to work together. Statera is here for you. 

Origins of statera mentorship

Statera Mentorship began as a grassroots effort, under the visionary leadership and organizational artistry of Jennifer Tuttle in 2016. Then an all-volunteer organization, Statera experienced the first wave of unanticipated, exponential growth of Mentorship and initiated a first pause in the program in order to raise crucial funding and support, and to reimagine the program for a more community-focused and efficient way of serving. 

Enter Erika Haaland after attending the 2017 National Conference in Denver, with a shared vision to launch a regional mentorship model, and a desire to try it out in her home city of Chicago. She partnered with Minita Gandhi, whom she also met at the Conference, as well as founding Chicago Chapter leaders, Emily Ritger, Eliza Stoughton, Anne Walaszek, Kim Morris, Laura Rook, and Jana Ross. In October of 2018, with the help of these visionaries, Statera re-launched the Mentorship program under a community-based, chapter format with an 18-month pilot program in Chicago. Utilizing portions of the original Statera Mentorship framework, packet materials, and learned insights, Erika and Minita also partnered with Wendy Stark Prey, who helped with further creation of the new intro packet in Chicago.  

The success of the program in its new iteration, thanks in no small part to all of the above-mentioned visionaries, made it possible to proceed in testing Statera’s first regional chapter in North Carolina, under the founding chapter leadership of Abbey Toot. Tireless work continued by an all-volunteer core of Chicago leaders, Dana Black, Susaan Jamshidi, Christine Vrem-Ydstie, and Lanise Antoine Shelley, who helped Erika, Minita, and the behind-the-scenes team at Statera to further develop the regional model of Statera Mentorship for its national expansion. 

Statera began compensating all directors in January of 2019, and continues to do so today, but the program’s growth and success are still due in large part, to the all-volunteer core of regional coordinators in each of our chapter cities. Our current model has taught us the hard way that while most volunteer posts in Mentorship are a reasonable commitment of time and effort, a few of our larger and faster-growing chapter cities require a significantly higher time commitment from our RCs. This has led us to reexamine the way we support these chapters, and sparks imagination for the future of chapter operations altogether. Learn more about the current pause on this program and the work Statera is doing to plan for the future here.