Mentorship Program

DVS brings together data visualization practitioners from across disciplines, techniques, and tech stacks. Through the mentorship program, you can explore a new path within our field, advance your skills in an area of practice you feel passionate about already, and, as a mentor, help to demystify career paths and learning opportunities in data visualization.

Unlike the more informal DVS Buddies Program and other community mentorship structures, the DVS approach focuses on setting a learning goal within a specific time period, and connects you both in dedicated mentor-mentee pairs and with a small community circle for sharing learning, questions, and ideas.

We’ve heard from our members that they would love more opportunities to connect in small, focused groups, given the size and breadth of work in an organization with more than 21,000 members. The Mentorship Program is a great way to make more of those connections. Plus, our Programs team will curate mentorship matches to align the needs of the mentee with the skills and experience of a mentor from our community.

Check out our Fireside Chat about mentorships and learn more about our Mentorship Program.

Participation as a mentee within the program is currently limited to dues-paying members of DVS. The mentorship program takes some focused attention to coordinate; thus we currently include participation as a paid member benefit. At this point, the program is focused on mentorship for early career visualizers - those with fewer than 5 years of experience in data viz - but we hope to expand to all phases and stages of career development in the future.

What is in the application?

Mentees will be asked about the type of work they want to do in a mentorship experience, what topics they are interested in, and what tools or technologies they want to use. Mentees can think about the choices as completing the following sentence:

I want to _________ in __________ using ____________.

I want to learn about data processing in environment, weather, and climate using Python.
I want to build skills in data visualization design using D3.

For each, you will be asked to indicate which are your:

• top priorities (e.g., opportunities in which you would be jumping for joy to work with a mentor),

• areas of interest but lower priority (e.g., opportunities in which you would still appreciate mentorship)

• areas with the least or no interest (e.g., topics you already know or would not be useful for you to learn).

How does DVS make mentee selections if too many people sign up?

We want to make sure as many people as feasible can experience this member benefit, but we have to be realistic about our capacity and the availability of mentors. General prioritization is as follows:

• Eligible applicants who were not matched in a prior cohort and are still interested in mentorship.

• Applicants who have been a paid member of the DVS for a longer period of time.

• Applicants who have never before been matched to a mentor in the DVS Mentorship Program.*

We aim to match 100 mentees each cohort; this number may vary based on availability and suitability of mentors (e.g., if there is a surplus of mentors that do not align with mentee needs, we will not force a match). We will post a notice at the top of this page when we will no longer be considering additional applications for a given cohort, though the form will remain open for future cohorts until the deadline. Applications will be open for at least two weeks.

*Previous mentees who are still considered early career may apply for additional mentorship cohorts, but they will be lower priority than applicants who have never been matched before.

WHat can I expect During the program?

Throughout the 3-month program, you’ll have the following touchpoints with the Mentorship Program:

• Kickoff event: Meet mentors and mentees with quick introductions of who you are and why you’re excited for this partnership.

• Individual meetings: Have one-on-one meetings with your mentor 6-10 times over 10 weeks.

• Group chat: Private Slack channel with your mentor and other mentors and mentees in your cohort.

• Celebration and Showcase event: Time to talk about your experience during the program, share a project you worked on, and network with fellow mentors and mentees.

At the conclusion of the program, the mentor and mentee can decide if they’d like to stay connected and continue collaborating or supporting each other in new ways. We’ve deliberately designed the facilitated program to be time-limited, with the goal that the pairs can focus on a specific learning goal and to simplify planning around your time and bandwidth during the program period. We’ll have new cohorts launching in the future!

Questions? Contact programs@datavisualizationsociety.org or mentorship@datavisualizationsociety.org.