Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota

Minneapolis, Sept. 8, 2005 — Theresa Reina, a graduate from Minneapolis public schools and the Minnesota School of Business, has helped and encouraged scores of other students to follow her path to success. Last night, some of Minnesota’s largest employers honored Reina for mentoring Roosevelt High School students through a program sponsored by GE Commercial Finance Fleet Services.

Reina received the Minnesota Business Partnership’s 2005 Connecting with Youth Award before 750 business and political leaders attending the Partnership’s Annual Dinner. “As everyone who works with young people knows,” Reina said, “mentoring is something that offers just as much reward to the mentor as the student.  I hope every organization offers the kind of support I have received from GE to be a mentor.”

Shortly after joining GE in 1999, Reina joined GE co-workers who were providing mini-workshops to the Business Small Learning Community (SLC) Mentorship class at Roosevelt High School. With Reina’s encouragement and leadership, the connection between Roosevelt High School and GE Fleet grew. Reina spearheaded job-shadowing, e-mentoring and an internship program for Roosevelt students.

This past year, Reina trained all 95 e-mentoring students in interview preparation before they visited GE Fleet to interview for internships and spend the day with their mentors. For the second year, the Business SLC graduation was onsite at Fleet, and the intern program now has grown to 19 students.

“Theresa is a remarkable woman who makes time in her own busy life to give back to others,” said Jim Andersen, president and CEO of IWCO Direct and chair of the Minnesota Business Partnership’s mentoring initiative. “She sets a tremendous example for all of us.”

The Partnership also honored nine “Heroes of Mentoring” for their work with young people. The 2005 Heroes of Mentoring include: William “Tex” Ostvig, University of Minnesota; Janice Aanenson, Capella University; Tom Church, Flint Hills Resources; Katie Okerstrom, General Mills; Joan Wilzbacher, a retiree from Wells Fargo Bank Minnesota; and Al Huff, Bennett Manning, Elizabeth Weis and Linda Harty from Lockheed Martin.

The Minnesota Business Partnership and the Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota present the Connecting with Youth Awards each year as part of the joint MBP Connections program. Through MBP Connections, the two organizations are working together to promote youth mentoring among Minnesota’s largest employers. Currently, 62 of the MBP’s member companies are involved in mentoring, connecting at least 19,000 young people in Minnesota with a caring adult. To learn more about mentoring, visit www.mentoringworks.org.

The Minnesota Business Partnership is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy organization made up of more than 100 chief executive officers of Minnesota’s leading employers. Since 1977, the Partnership has been committed to developing and advocating public policies that encourage the creation and retention of high quality jobs in Minnesota.