It’s been a decade since the HBS Club of Singapore (HBSCS) launched its signature Mentorship Program, aimed at helping local university and trade school students to prepare for life after graduation, both personally and professionally.

The program is still going strong: To date, about 150 HBS alumni mentors have helped more than 1,500 mentees develop skills like networking, entrepreneurial thinking and defining personal success. For six months of their penultimate college year, cohorts of six students meet regularly with two mentors for guidance meant to bridge the gap between their academic courses and the professional world that awaits them.

“This program is about connecting Singapore students to mentors they would not otherwise encounter, so they can learn from their diverse perspectives and open their minds to a broader set of career and life paths,” says HBSCS past president and program co-founder Stan Furman (MBA 2005).

“I’m sure we’ve all experienced moments of ‘I wish I had known that when I was younger!’ Having grown up in a small, rural town in Illinois, the son of educators, I certainly have,” he adds. “Navigating my career through engineering to HBS and then into finance, I sometimes felt envious of classmates and colleagues who grew up with parents or family friends offering insights into various career paths. Sharing perspectives I wish I’d heard when I was younger is what motivated me to create this program, and is what continues to excite me most.”

After high school, students in Singapore are assigned to either a trade school or a university, based on their academic performance. Beyond that, they aren’t given much guidance on how to build a career path. By connecting with these highly accomplished mentors, they are able to expand their understanding of what’s possible and look for opportunities they might never have previously considered.

The volunteer mentors—primarily HBS alumni as well as alumni from several other universities including other Harvard schools—are leading professionals representing a broad range of sectors, from finance to government.

A kick-off event each fall focuses on team-building among and across each cohort, followed by regular, independent group meetings to help students learn from real-life scenarios as well as from their peers and mentors.

Jeremy Tan (MBA 2008), who currently runs the program with Furman, says 29 alumni mentors worked with 84 mentees in the 2023-2024 cycle, and feedback from students continues to affirm the powerful impact of this partnership.

“My biggest takeaway from my mentors is to not be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and just to try new things and take up any opportunities that arise,” says one student. “This mentorship program helped me to learn and understand more about myself, not only as an entrepreneur-want-to-be, but also as a leader,” adds another. Still another student learned the importance of “finding meaning and fulfilment in what I decide to pursue.”

Furman and Tan say they’re constantly learning and refining the program to ensure its sustainability for the long term. When Singapore was in lockdown during the pandemic and the program moved to a virtual format, the enrollment jumped to 300 mentees each year in 2021 and in 2022.“Students were looking for more opportunities to connect and mentors found themselves with more time to give back,” says Tan.

“We learned the pros and cons of virtual and hybrid meetings, while navigating the challenges of not being able to meet face-to-face,” adds Furman. “We also realized that after a certain size, our centralized logistics started becoming the bottleneck of the process. When the lockdown lifted, we decided to take a step back for a year so we could strategize with our mentee school partners to improve our process.”

The program rebooted for the 2023/2024 year with a more streamlined process and a return to a lower enrollment to enhance its impact. Furman and Tan say the biggest management lesson has been the realization that “less is more,” and that in most cases it’s far better for the central steering committee to take a hands-off approach.

“The main role of our steering committee is to be here to help address any challenges and to keep lines of communication open between mentors and our partner mentee schools,” says Tan.

“Now, after matching mentors with mentees and coordinating the October kick-off event, we step back and let the cohorts get on with the relationship-building and perspective sharing that’s always been the foundation of the program,” says Tan. “We plan to gradually grow again from here, as we continue to prioritize quality over quantity.”

While they don’t formally keep track of mentees after the program ends each year, Furman says many do stay in touch and share updates with their individual mentors. A few have even accepted internships and jobs with alumni companies in Singapore.

“The Mentorship Program is such a powerful platform for our HBS alums to give back to the community by helping a group of students think globally, aim higher and prepare to face life’s challenges,” says Tan. “Our partner schools are very grateful for all that our members give to this program. Our most valuable resource remains our alumni, who continue to volunteer their invaluable time each year to share their insights and experience with a new group of mentees.”

With a majority of alumni mentors returning each year, it’s clear that they get as much from the program as the mentees—something Furman, also a mentor, emphasizes every fall at the kick-off event. “The reason mentors return year after year is because we find this experience incredibly rewarding,” he says. “We feel more connected to HBS and each other, and we’re making a difference in Singapore.”

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