Career Strategy with Darren

If you're looking for a mentor who will guide, challenge, and inspire you, look no further than Darren. The past year has been a turbulent one with many personal and professional challenges and I am so thankful I had Darren to help me work through them. Darren not only helped me navigate them, but he also helped me reframe them as learning opportunities. I truly believe my mentoring relationship with Darren was a major driver behind the success, resilience, and confidence I've been able to experience this past year. As an expert communicator and collaborator, Darren made it a priority for us to leverage our time between meetings to stay connected asynchronously, allowing us to make the most of the synchronous time we spent together in our meetings. He worked with me to build a plan for our discussions, but was incredibly flexible when priorities shifted and I decided to take the conversations in new/unexpected directions. Our topics were diverse, ranging from specific work situations to targeted skills I was trying to build to overall life goals, and Darren was able to meet me where I was on each one to provide incredibly useful guidance, support, and advice. The combination of Darren's wealth of experience and his intentional, inquisitive, open-minded approach sets him apart as a top-tier mentor. Regardless of your specific situation, I have no doubt you'll find immense value from having Darren as your mentor. Darren has helped me grow in more ways than I could have imagined coming into our engagement, and I'm confident you'll be able to say the same for yours.

Darren was a great and very attentive mentor. He gave me many actionable advice and exercises that helped me become a more confident and better-spoken professional in just a few months. Darren also helped me a lot in understanding how to break down large concepts into smaller chunks. He's very quick to respond and always provides feedback.

I sought mentorship for my resume and career after hitting a roadblock. Darren provided excellent feedback and advice to help overcome this barrier. I have already applied this feedback and have adjusted my mindset towards my career search because of Darren's advice. I can't thank Darren enough.

Darren is a phenomenal mentor who has made me realize time and time again that while goals are great to have and wonderful tools to measure progress, the proof is in the process. Since my mentorship with Darren commenced, I've gradually and somewhat subconsciously began to look forward to the journey just as much- if not more- than the esteemed *destination.* Because I'm confident in the steps I'm taking, I find myself obsessing less about the end result and basking more in the here and now [*which is not to say that I don't have my "eye on the prize," but rather that new prizes have been introduced along the way]. In the span of a few short months, I've gained a level of confidence and self assurance that has allowed me to take risks and bet on myself. Case in point: last month, I made the decision to co-found a company because I believed so deeply in it's mission and my co-founders and realized that in this particular season of my life, I can afford to prioritize gaining the type of education that only being a founder can provide, and deprioritize consistency and financial predictability. While my priorities can and likely will change over the course of my career, the process through which I will make those major career (and life!) decisions will - at it's core - be roughly the same. I feel more empowered than ever to take on new challenges and embrace uncertainty and I can't recommend working with Darren enough!

Darren is an incredible mentor and exactly what I had hoped for in my 1st mentorship with MentorCruise! He kick-started the mentorship process by providing tools/techniques for us both to create a contextual understanding of our profiles which has helped me to leverage & maximize the mentorship thus far. Darren is a very engaged mentor and has provided me with fantastic insights on my focus areas & questions that even early in the mentorship started bearing results. I also found that if there was a need to connect he was always willing to support and very responsive. I look forward to the future & highly recommend Darren as a mentor for anyone looking to level up!