AIS SIG DITE: Early Career Mentorship Program

The Early Career Mentorship Program was started in 2025 by the Student Ambassadors TC Eley IV and Ann-Katrin Eicke to address the problem of a lack of mentorship opportunities for early career researchers. This program is a global, inclusive community for growth, support, and connection through digital career mentorship over a period of one year. A unique feature of this program is that mentors are just one step ahead in their careers compared to their mentees, thus creating a space for mentees to learn from those who have recently walked in their shoes. The mentorship groups meet online with in-person events at some conferences. We are grateful to the mentors for volunteering their time to support our community.

The goals of the program:

• Connect early career researchers to relevant mentors
• Provide networking opportunities
• Increase belongingness in the IS community
• Increase career self-efficacy

The process of the program:

• Mentees and mentors sign up
• Mentees are assigned to mentors based on geographic location and career stage
• Kick-off meeting run by the SIG DITE Student Ambassadors
• Mentorship groups meet online around once every two months for about a year
• In-person meetups at some conferences

The 2025 program had 97 mentees and 49 mentors representing all three AIS regions with in-person meetups at the Academy of Management conference, AMCIS, and ICIS.