Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota

Joellen Gonder-Spacek is the founding executive director of the Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota.  Since 1994, she has led the strategic direction of one of the original mentoring partnerships in the United States.  Gonder-Spacek has provided leadership to the mentoring movement and brought together a multitude of community leaders around the issue of more mentoring for children, youth, and families in Minnesota.  Recognized as national leaders, Gonder-Spacek and her staff, board of directors, and volunteers have recruited 44,000 thousand mentors, generated over $4 million dollars, provided training to over 5,000 mentors and 300 mentor organizations, assembled mentor networks for 400 mentor programs, and developed an award-winning multi-media public education to action campaign. Gonder-Spacek has twenty years of experience in resource development, community mobilization, partnership development, strategic planning, marketing communications, and social entrepreneurism.  Gonder-Spacek has a degree in organizational communications from Creighton University and has completed master’s level work in business communication at the University of St. Thomas.  She currently mentors as a basketball coach.