The Director of Alumni Engagement has launched an internal mentorship initiative that will help connect successful alumni with undergraduates looking for direction and professional and fraternal advice. The following is a transcribed and edited interview where the Director of Alumni Engagement and VP of Marketing discuss the program and the logistics of it.

VP of Marketing: If you could just give me a jist of the mentorship program, then I will get into my questions.

Director of Alumni Engagement: Sure, so Basically the concept of what the mentorship program is pulling alumni that kind of don’t know how to get back into ODPhi and helping out as well as giving the undergraduates some professional perspective of what they are trying to achieve by getting their degrees in certain fields and by connecting them with alumni in those fields to give them a better strategy or better game plan to get a head start in the workforce. A perfect example: If I hadn’t met Fred Davis, I wouldn’t understand some of the business sides of marketing and have gotten my foot in the door into other companies because of the connection that me and Fred built through the brotherhood. So the whole point of this is to give these younger brothers the opportunity to build these networking systems within their field with brothers who have already gone through those basic steps and have succeeded in the entry levels into the higher positions so they can get a jump start into those companies they are looking for.

VPM: What value do you see in having a program of this type within the brotherhood?

DAE: The value I see in it is that doing something like this, that through developing this program and as someone who might relocate to another area because of work, this program could help in strengthening the Local Alumni Associations through brothers becoming mentors, could help build that network again and allow those alumni to help those alumni associations in their areas. By establishing something like this, we are giving the next generation a foothold into things, and will allow those brothers that are now alumni, to give back to the younger generations. This will start a snowball effect, brothers will no longer think that they can only be involved by being part of their regional board or national board but now that they can give back in a different manner which leads into our values, our concept of graduating brothers.

VPM: How do you believe this new program aligns with the goals of our fraternity?

DAE: Obviously, our goals are to graduate our brothers and serve our community. We always look at the outside community but why not look the community within? Why not help each other out too so we can strive to be better and be a greater organization? Having a mentor will assist them and help them focus a little bit more. If you want to go for that masters, you need to have good GPA which instills more studying and helping them get those grades that we need for brothers to graduate.

VPM: So mentoring within would have a positive impact outwardly as an alumni brother?

DAE: By having this mentorship program, alumni who felt like they wouldn’t be able to give back until they were stable in their careers, because they would be giving back on their time to one undergraduate brother who wants to go through the same thing as them. Sometimes I feel like this program, if it proceeds as I imagine it, I think it would have more of an impact than someone who is on national board or is a director because you are going to have an impact on one individual life by giving them that foothold.

VPM: That leads in to my last question, where do you envision this program to be five years from now?

DAE:   I see it as a great way for us to not only getting alumni who haven’t been involved as much back into Omega Delta Phi, and to have those brothers who go through the program to want to give back to the younger ones so eventually its so common that we do stuff like this. Instead of us graduating and struggling for ten years, by us doing something like this, we will be bypassing us entry level jobs and allowing us to establish ourselves as individuals and professionals.


The mentorship program is being coordinated by Director of Alumni Engagement Michael Martinez, from the Beta Beta chapter at California State University, Dominguez Hills. For more information contact him at