Three-quarters of working professionals believe mentorship matters for their career growth. Yet more than half go without one. This disconnect between perceived value and actual access has created what workforce researchers call the mentorship gap—a structural problem that costs companies talent and costs individuals opportunity.
The numbers tell a striking story. According to a 2025 survey from MentorcliQ, 76% of professionals believe a mentor is important for growth, yet over 54% do not have one. Meanwhile, 98% of Fortune 500 companies now offer formal mentoring programs, and those that do report median profits more than twice as high as those without such programs. Organizations clearly recognize mentorship’s value. But access remains uneven, particularly for first-generation students and young people from under-resourced communities who lack the professional networks that often lead to mentorship in the first place.
JP Conte, managing partner of family office Lupine Crest Capital and a former leader at a San Francisco-based private equity firm, has spent years working to close this gap. His approach combines financial support with something harder to scale: personal involvement. Through his work with SEO Scholars—a free, eight-year academic program that has achieved an 85% college graduation rate among students from low-income backgrounds—Conte has made mentorship a hands-on commitment.
“These are kids who, voluntarily in eighth grade, agree to go into this program and do after-school work, work on Saturdays, work during the summer, and extra tutoring to supplement their public school education,” Conte has said. “Plus, they agreed to mentoring to get them to go to college.”
The Gap Between Intention and Access
For Gen Z workers entering the labor force, the mentorship deficit is particularly acute. Research from Adobe found that 83% of Gen Z workers believe having a workplace mentor is important for their career, yet only 52% report having one. This generation, projected to make up the majority of the workforce by 2035, faces a confidence crisis: their reported confidence in ability to succeed dropped from 59% in 2024 to just 39% in 2025, according to data compiled by Mentorloop.
The disparity is even wider for women. A 2025 HiBob report found that less than 10% of women have a formal mentor at work, compared to 15% of men. Only 24% of women leaders have ever had a formal mentor, compared to 30% of men, according to research compiled by Mentorink.
JP Conte’s response to these disparities has been direct engagement. Each year, he travels to New York to speak with SEO Scholars students about careers in private equity—an industry where such access is notoriously difficult to obtain without existing connections. “I go to New York every year to give a presentation about private equity to SEO students, showing them that they, too, can have a future in this industry,” he has shared.
Starting Earlier to Change Trajectories
SEO Scholars operates across four cities—New York, San Francisco, North Carolina, and Miami—and provides more than 600 additional hours of academic instruction to participating students, equivalent to 1.5 years of math and 2.5 years of English language arts. With a 100% college acceptance rate and an 85% graduation rate, the program’s outcomes stand in sharp contrast to the roughly 20% graduation rate among students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds nationally.
For Jean-Pierre Conte, supporting students at the college level wasn’t enough. He recognized that the information gap—the difference in knowledge about college preparation, applications, and career paths between first-generation students and their more privileged peers—often begins much earlier.
“A light went off, and I said, ‘By the time the student gets to university, especially some of these universities, they’re now focused on the money issue.’ And I came to the conclusion that I need to start sooner, in high school or earlier, to really help change the trajectory,” Conte has recalled.
This insight shaped his philanthropic focus. Rather than waiting until students arrive at university, JP Conte’s giving now targets the formative years when academic habits, career awareness, and professional networks begin to take shape. SEO Scholars students begin the program in eighth or ninth grade, committing to after-school sessions, Saturday classes, and summer programming that continues through college graduation.
The financial commitment required to sustain such programming is substantial. SEO’s recent expansion to Miami-Dade County, which launched in February 2025, is projected to cost more than $30 million over eight years to serve hundreds of students.
The Business Case for Mentorship
The return on mentorship investment extends beyond individual career outcomes. Companies with formal mentoring programs demonstrate measurably stronger performance across multiple metrics. According to MentorcliQ’s analysis of Fortune 500 companies, those with mentoring programs showed a median year-over-year employee growth of just over 3%, while companies without such programs experienced a median decrease of 33% in employee headcount.
Retention data reinforces this pattern. Millennials with mentors are twice as likely to stay with their organization for more than five years—68% compared to 32% of those without mentors. For organizations competing for talent in fields like finance, technology, and healthcare, mentorship programs have become less of a perk than a baseline expectation.
JP Conte’s own career trajectory illustrates the compounding effects of early mentorship. Growing up in Brooklyn and New Jersey as a first-generation American, he benefited from connections his father made while working as a tailor and clothing salesman to Wall Street professionals. Those relationships opened doors to internships and advice that helped close what Conte calls “the information gap.”
“They gave me internships, mentoring, good advice, and it really helped close the information gap, which exists when your parents don’t go to college or aren’t on that track,” Conte has explained.
Beyond Writing Checks
What distinguishes Jean-Pierre Conte’s approach to mentorship from conventional philanthropy is his insistence on personal involvement. Conte has provided mentorship opportunities and delivers annual presentations to SEO students about careers in finance. When SEO Scholars in the Bay Area needed stronger leadership, Conte pushed for organizational changes that expanded the program’s reach dramatically.
“We multiplied the number of students served in the Bay Area by five to seven times,” he has noted. “A lot of nonprofits aren’t run crisply.”
This willingness to apply the same operational rigor to charitable work that he brought to decades in private equity has become a defining feature of his philanthropic model. Through the Conte First Generation Fund, established at 11 universities, including his alma maters Colgate and Harvard, JP Conte has extended financial support to students facing the same challenges he once navigated.
“I’ve always felt the need to give back,” Conte has said.
For the 54% of professionals who lack mentors, the path forward may depend on whether more business leaders follow a similar model—one where closing the mentorship gap becomes a matter of sustained institutional commitment rather than occasional charitable impulse.
