Andy Schindling & Kate Murphy

The Creation of the Mentoring Profession in the United States

Why This Work Matters

Most mentoring in America is volunteer-based, inconsistent, and underfunded. Young people get brief relationships with caring adults — and then those adults disappear. For high-risk youth, that loss isn't neutral. It can undo years of progress. The solution isn't more mentors — it's a system that treats mentoring as a real career, with training, credentials, and staying power.

We're supporting Andy and Kate because they've spent eight years proving this model works inside real schools, with real outcomes. This Fellowship gives them the time to codify it into something the rest of the country can use.

The Work

Andy and Kate will spend the Fellowship year designing a replicable, scalable framework for professionalizing youth mentorship. That means a comprehensive landscape analysis of mentoring in American schools, a defined set of mentor competencies and training standards, a credentialing and accreditation model for both individual mentors and organizations, and a practical Mentor Playbook that any program can put to use.

By May 2027, the goal is a full blueprint for a professionalized mentoring field — ready to bring to school districts, funders, and policymakers nationwide.

The Fellows

Andy Schindling

Founding CEO, TCP Youth Empowerment

Andy pitched for the Baltimore Orioles until a series of choices — and the absence of anyone to guide him through them — derailed his career at 23. That experience became the foundation of TCP Youth Empowerment, which he started in 2015. Over eight years, TCP has grown from a single mentor serving 12 fifth-graders to a full suite of in-school, after-school, and summer programs. 63% of TCP participants have improved their math or reading proficiency; 93% of Young Leaders participants report increased confidence and self-esteem. Andy holds a Nonprofit Leadership certificate from the University of Maryland and a B.S. in Business Administration from Towson University.

Kate Murphy

Executive Assistant & Co-Fellow, TCP Youth Empowerment

Kate brings four years of classroom experience to this work, including two years at a low-income Title I school in the Bronx. She has seen both what mentorship can do for students in under-resourced schools, and the structural barriers that keep it from being sustained. Her educator's lens will be central to designing a training framework that actually works inside real school systems.