Meet the Staff: Introducing MENTOR’s new Director of Communications, Kelsey Nelson
September 13, 2024
September 13, 2024
Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
First off, it’s so great to meet the extended family of MENTOR. I look forward to being in fellowship and community with you all.
To introduce myself, my name is Kelsey Nelson, and I am MENTOR’s new Director of Communications, a role I am super excited to dive into.
For background, I have over a decade of experience in the communications and journalism industry. I have jointly worked as a communications specialist working mainly with groups in the nonprofit sector and as a freelance reporter covering sports for a variety of networks in the broadcast realm. I also have experience as a business owner, consultant, and entrepreneur that has had the chance to work with companies large and small, public and private.
As one of my favorite songs by Ledisi entails, there are “Pieces Of Me.” As I look back, I know my story is that of many caring adults that were not just involved in my life, but truly invested their time, love, care, and talents into me. They delivered tough love when I needed it and helped give me the will to never give up on myself.
Whether it was Mr. Clayton who taught me the game of chess, at a time when I only wanted to play checkers, not wanting to challenge myself to learn a new chess game of chess, as my competitive edge just wanted to stick with what I knew and what I was good at. From Mr. Clayton at the Germantown Branch Boys and Girls Club I learned, life is about evolving.
Or whether it was my basketball coach Mr. Young making us run “suicides” to improve our mental and physical fitness as athletes, so many mentors have played a crucial role in my life and the shaping of me.
And I can’t forget Ms. Linda at the Damascus Recreation Center, from whom I learned the responsibility and true weight of being a leader. Realizing not all decisions come easy.
It was also Ms. Monika and Mr. Steve, helping me to see what it truly means to be allowed to lead in your own way.
And from Sherrod for whom I learned what it is to have a mentor and an advocate, all wrapped into one.
From all of these mentors, I have been shaped into the woman I am today, as a woman driven by the ability to make her community better by investing into the people and finding the necessary resources to keep it thriving.
What does your new role entail? What are you most looking forward to?
At the end of the day I am a storyteller and connector who seeks to influence. I want to successfully be able to tell the MENTOR elevator pitch to any willing and listening ear that I connect with on all personal and professional levels.
My role entails joining the current marketing and communications team to successfully show and tell MENTOR’s evolution and how the premise of quality mentoring available in a quantity of ways, all over the country, matters.
I want to connect with a wide array of audiences at both the local and national levels. I hope to help drive the mentorship conversation around youth voice. I also hope my experience as both a mentor and mentee help lend to the narrative of MENTOR’s work.
Currently I am part of various mentorship programs including recently wrapping up the 2023-2024 Maryland Made Mentor Program, where I worked and continue to work with my mentee Jewel Ofotan, a member of the University of Maryland’s track and field team. I also have two new mentees Akirra and Keniya with the Multicultural Career Intern Program, at Columbia Heights Educational Campus in Washington, D.C. as I head into my third year with the program.
I hope to further share the lived experience of MENTOR Affiliates and to help to continue to grow the annual National Mentoring Summit while also helping to communicate the goals of MENTOR’s research and resources.
I am most looking forward to being in the community, building mutually beneficial relationships, and connecting with media entities near and far on all levels.
What brought you to MENTOR?
The work that lies ahead brought me to MENTOR. I am driven by the opportunity to make an impact and the ability to solve a challenge. I embrace MENTOR’s mission and goal-oriented vision.
I have seen MENTOR’s work firsthand and was always inspired by the mission driven organization. I was privileged to have collaborated with MENTOR National and Affiliates on advising for the Mentoring Women in Sports Leadership Summit led by MENTOR MD|DC and to work with MENTOR National supporting the work of the Foster Youth Mentoring Act.
What also led me to MENTOR was the great diversity within the organization.
I wanted the ability to learn more about MENTOR’s work while also wanting to expand the reach of MENTOR’s story, which I feel the world should know.
What gives you hope for young people in America?
If you don’t know where you’ve been, you will have difficulty seeing where you are going.
These words rang true for me everyday as I seek to learn from my ancestors before me and keep a positive outlook as I work alongside and embrace the youthfulness of Gen X. What an incredible opportunity we have each day to learn from these young leaders.
Hope and faith to me are guiding principles and what motivates me every day, that better days lie ahead. The fact that we have hopefully learned from both the successes and failures of young people and generations prior while supporting today’s young people who continue to be on the front lines, is a testament to the power of youth agency.
What motivates me is the trailblazing work that young people have done and what they continue to do. Whether it was the young people with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the civil rights movement or the brave Darnella Frazier, who recorded George Floyd’s murder as he was experienced his last breaths further exposing to the world the continuum of police brutality against Black men, we have bore witness to young people changing the world for the better.
This is the reason why I make sure to surround myself with the ideas, thoughts and concepts of young people through the two internship programs I run for young people interested in media in addition to students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities and my current journalism students.
Today through exemplary groups like the Greater Washington Urban League’s Thursday Network for young professionals or the NAACP Youth and College Division, young people continue to impact our everyday life, persevering through all that life throws our way.