Four Years, In Full.

The Collective Identity Mentoring (TCI) is a community built for young Black women and gender-expansive youth, because we believe it takes a collective effort to change a life. TCI provides one-on-one mentorship with professional Black women, culturally grounded group programming through our signature Confabs, professional development and career access, and wellness and emergency support.

Every program, every session, every mentor match is designed around one question: what does this young woman need right now to feel seen, safe, and connected, and to grow and thrive? TCI receives no funding from the University of Southern California. We are an independently operated nonprofit, funded entirely by the generosity of our community.

How We Got Here

Cumulative Program Reach, 2022–2026

TCI's mentee population has grown from four mentees at launch in Fall 2022, to six in Spring 2023, to a range of 10 to 15 in the years since, to 20 mentees today.

Outcome Trends, SP24–SP26

Every spring, we ask mentees to rate their experience on a 1 to 5 scale. TCI expanded its survey instrument after our first year to capture deeper outcome measures. Where a measure wasn't yet part of the survey, the cell is left blank rather than filled in with a guess.

Session History By Term

After Term 1, mentees told us honestly that the excursion pace was hard to balance with school and personal responsibilities. We listened, and settled into a lighter, more sustainable rhythm starting in Term 2. That's one of TCI's defining traits: a program that responds directly to what our mentees tell us, and has since year one.

Mentee Voice

The Inaugural Cohort

When TCI launched in October 2022, four young Black women walked through our doors. Three were 18-year-old freshmen, all from out of state, navigating a college campus far from home for the first time. The fourth was a graduate student already reaching toward something larger. All four graduated from USC in Spring 2026, TCI's inaugural cohort's first full cycle from freshman year to commencement.

The Women Who Show Up Every Other Week

20 professional Black women currently serve as TCI mentors. 25 women have served as mentors since TCI's founding.

Mentors rated "would recommend TCI to other mentors" at 4.62 in 2023–2024, climbing to a perfect 5.00 by SP26. "Supported by TCI staff" followed the same path, 4.62 to 5.00.

What Mentors Find Most Rewarding

• Watching mentees grow in confidence year over year
• Being the representation they wish they'd had
• Building genuine, trusting relationships
• Being asked for advice on personal matters, a sign of deep trust

What Mentors Find Most Challenging

• Staying in consistent communication around demanding academic schedules
• Navigating different personality types between mentor and mentee
• Not wanting to feel like they're nagging or parenting
• Distance from campus creating logistical barriers for some mentors

We share the challenges alongside the wins on purpose. A program that only tells you what's working isn't being honest with you, and honesty is what's kept mentors coming back at a 100% rate two years running.

Bringing the Full Range of Black Women's Leadership Into the Room

In response to mentee feedback asking for more diverse perspectives, TCI built a guest speaker program that brings accomplished leaders directly into our intimate, informal setting, candid conversation instead of a formal panel.

These relationships haven't stayed at arm's length. Grace Fooden and Brittany Allen came back as TCI mentors. Vanessa Simmons became a supporter, donating curated wellness excursions for our mentees and mentors. Teresa Bryce Bazemore found TCI through word of mouth while looking for a place to donate business clothes, then became a donor, and later a guest speaker herself. What started as an hour in a room with our mentees became, for many of these women, an investment in TCI's future.