Here's some advice to mortgage executives who have accumulated a lot of expertise in the business world—pass on what you've learned. Pay it forward.
I don't mean just to pass knowledge along to business associates and subordinates. Mentor young people, who know little about the business world and are anxious about their prospects in it.
And with today's uncertain economy, these kids' prospects may be more challenging than the ones previous generations faced when we left school.
I got the chance to experience mentoring recently when invited to participate in the Grady Talks series. This valuable program (
Especially relevant for me personally was that Grady High School in Atlanta is named after a prominent local journalist (Henry Grady) and has been a magnet school for communications (it is broadening out now to four separate "academies"). I don't know how many budding journalists there are at Grady High, but I'll bet there are a few at least.
Anyone whose ideas about what big city high schools are like come from television shows would benefit from a trip to Grady High.
Its corridors are orderly, clean and well-maintained, and the students I met and spoke to about journalism were polite, attentive and responsive. And very bright.
I can recommend the Grady Talks series to any business professional in the Atlanta area or who visits the city or changes airplanes in its crowded airport. And, of course, if you don't get to Atlanta, mentoring opportunities in your local areas abound.
Congratulations are in order for Denis Brosnan, CEO of Prommis Solutions, an Atlanta mortgage vendor who is the lead sponsor of Grady Talks, as well as to Liz Lieberman and her associates who run the series and videotape the presentations for those students (and others) that can't be present in person.
Your knowledge of the business world and your path to where you are today may inspire a student who will carry some part of your values far into the future. And that's a future which, if populated by people like the students I met at Grady High, is one well worth envisioning.
And you may get more out of it than the students you mentor.
