The Gift of Mentorship in Public Health: A Lifelong Exchange

National Public Health Week is a time to celebrate the dedication and impact of public health practitioners, researchers, and the future leaders of our field. A recurring theme during this week is the critical need to build and strengthen the public health workforce.

For me, this focus always brings to mind the profound importance of mentorship.

Professional mentorship is truly a gift. At its core, it's about learning from someone else's experience, knowledge, and skills. But it goes deeper than that. Meaningful mentorship is rooted in shared values and a mutual commitment to the work we do.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had powerful, inspiring mentors throughout my early career—relationships that have continued to shape me in ways that are hard to quantify. These mentors provided exactly what I needed, whether it was direct feedback, thought-provoking questions that helped me consider the broader context of our work, or spiritual guidance during times when the stakes were high.

One of my mentors, Mary Pat, and I at the White House in 2012.

These kinds of mentors are often mentioned when people reflect on their careers. But what has been especially life-giving for me in recent years—especially as I’ve reached mid-career—is the experience of lateral and reverse mentoring.

Lateral mentorship refers to learning from peers—colleagues at similar stages in their careers—rather than strictly those more senior or junior. Lateral mentors offer practical advice, real-time feedback, and emotional support because they are often facing similar challenges. Peer mentorship helps to break down hierarchical barriers, fosters honesty, and creates space for mutual reflection and problem-solving.

Reverse mentoring specifically describes learning from younger or less-tenured professionals. The Harvard Business Review highlights that reverse mentoring is particularly effective for exposing experienced professionals to fresh perspectives, innovations, and emerging cultural and technological trends. While traditionally mentoring has been thought of as top-down, reverse mentoring creates meaningful opportunities for learning to flow upward, reshaping how we approach leadership, inclusion, and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, here is another great article on reverse mentoring, or an article (here) to learn more about many different types of mentoring relationships.

Personally, these mentorship relationships have been transformational. From younger colleagues, I’ve learned patience, reflection, and different ways of doing the work. From older mentors, I’ve gained grit, perspective, and self-compassion. From peers, I’ve found solidarity, creativity, and the priceless feeling of being fully seen by someone walking a similar path.

Mentorship support comes in so many forms. These written notes are ones that I keep close to my desk.

Midlife mentorship, viewed through both lateral and reverse mentoring lenses, has become a dynamic and vital space where wisdom, inspiration, and learning flow.

Meeting this current moment in public health—post-pandemic, amid widespread disinvestment, and with the shifting priorities of our political landscape—has been uniquely challenging. My mentors have been a lifeline. They’ve offered a safe harbor to grieve the lives and the important work lost, as well as the changes to our practice. They’ve also helped me hold on to hope and envision what public health could still become in this country.

Two guiding pieces of wisdom, gifted to me by mentors, continue to serve me well:

1. Stay engaged.

2. Invest in building and mentoring the next generation of public health professionals.

Staying engaged hasn’t always been easy, especially given the challenges of today’s political environment. Yet, every time I connect with emerging leaders and draw strength from the steady presence of my mentors, I find the motivation to keep going — grounded, hopeful, and committed.

So I leave you with a question:

What have your mentors taught you? And equally important—what are you passing on?