Mentor Spotlight4 min read
The power
of mentorship.
For National Mentoring Day, a Thrive Scholar and his mentor look back on their year together.
When Victor Martinez, a high school valedictorian, arrived at Northwestern feeling “dropped in the deep end,” his Thrive mentor, Jay Basso, became someone he could confide in as he worked through the challenges of his first year of college.
Jay didn’t know what to expect when he walked into a Thrive Scholars networking event in Chicago three years ago. He’d signed up to help students who were preparing for upcoming interviews and walked out of the event inspired to do a lot more.
“Every single question the students asked was sharp and focused,” he says. “They had a plan for what they were looking for. I was so impressed with every one of them.”
Eager to help, he went back to his team at GEI Consultants, which has partnered with Thrive Scholars in Chicago for nearly five years, and asked how he could get further involved. He’s been a Thrive mentor ever since.
Jay studied civil and environmental engineering in Milwaukee. His career since has taken him from designing environmental cleanups to directing excavation crews, building bridges across rivers in Hawaii, and working in American Samoa. Today, as a Senior Environmental Professional at GEI Consultants, he helps prepare land for its next life by investigating properties before they’re sold and redeveloped.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Victor loved math and science from a young age. He finished high school as valedictorian and enrolled at Northwestern University to study mechanical engineering, later adding a second major in electrical engineering.
As a first-generation college student, Victor was figuring out how to navigate college all on his own. Through Thrive’s Summer Academies, one held before his senior year of high school and another held before his freshman year, Victor got an early taste of college coursework, campus life, and a community of peers with shared ambitions. He describes these experiences as eye-opening and a first taste of what independence really means. Even so, settling into Northwestern took time. In high school, so much had been decided for him, down to his daily schedule. College, Victor says, felt like being “dropped in the deep end.”
With mentorship built into Thrive’s six-year program, Victor didn’t have to navigate his first year of college alone. He was matched with Jay, then in his second year as a mentor, and the two met over Zoom twice a month throughout Victor’s first year at Northwestern. Victor remembers Jay as open and welcoming from the start. Jay, in turn, saw a sharp, thoughtful student still finding his footing and adjusting to life on campus.
Jay’s approach to mentoring
The best answers are the ones students reach themselves.
Each conversation with a mentee starts with the question “What’s on your mind?” and from there, Jay lets them lead. Even at 18 or 19, he believes, students bring their own life experience to the table. Rather than dictating their path, he focuses on listening, asking thoughtful questions, and helping Scholars arrive at their own answers.
Looking back on their year together, Victor says Jay’s impact went well beyond academics. “I built healthier habits, grew my understanding of what it means to be an engineer, developed my worldview, and had a person to confide in,” he says.
Now in his second year at Northwestern, Victor explores his passion for engineering through the university’s robotics and Formula Racing clubs. A builder at heart, he hopes to pursue a career in research and development, turning the ideas that spark his curiosity into innovative designs with real-world impact.
Outside of environmental consulting, Jay is a semi-professional magician. He started taking classes during COVID, and plans to make magic his next act when he retires. The craft echoes what he teaches his mentees. “You spend a little bit of time on something every day,” he says, “and over time it has outsized benefits.”
The formal mentoring year is over, but Victor and Jay’s connection will last beyond the program. Victor plans to keep checking in with Jay monthly as the school year picks up, and he says his mentors have become friends. In all their time together, Jay and Victor have only ever met over Zoom, but that could soon change in November, when Victor expects to be in the audience at Jay’s upcoming magic show.