{"id":4086,"date":"2016-02-02T17:21:11","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T22:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/?p=4086"},"modified":"2024-02-14T10:38:05","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T15:38:05","slug":"mentor-tom-cooper-on-giving-back-and-the-bdc-mentorship-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/blog\/mentor-tom-cooper-on-giving-back-and-the-bdc-mentorship-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Mentor, Tom Cooper on Giving Back and the BDC Mentorship Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tom Cooper has always believed in the importance of business mentors. After all, he still follows the advice of his own mentor years later, even though he\u2019s since evolved from entrepreneur to consultant, investor and Associate Professor in Strategy in Memorial University\u2019s Faculty of Business Administration.<\/p>\n

Tom has had many mentors over the years, some of whom he still turns to for advice. He has also become an accomplished mentor himself, with three formal mentoring relationships through Futurpreneur Canada under his belt, as well as a number of informal roles with entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

Seeing the impact mentorship can make on a professional, no matter what stage they\u2019re at in their career, is the reason that when Tom was first asked to become a mentor, his answer was a resounding \u201cyes\u201d. <\/em>\u201cI\u2019m in a privileged position now where I can offer some insights and more importantly just listen to the problems, concerns, and experiences entrepreneurs are going through,\u201d Tom shared.<\/p>\n

Being a mentor to young entrepreneurs has many rewarding moments, but Tom explained that he loves when he gives advice and sees it work. Tom said that he also gets a lot of personal satisfaction by being able to make connections with others. \u201cI definitely don\u2019t know everything and finding the people who can answer questions, provide better advice than me, or just take entrepreneurs to the next level gives me a lot of satisfaction.\u201d Tom explained that mentoring doesn\u2019t have to take a lot of your time, and not only is it a way of giving back, but it also has a lot of mutual benefits for both the mentee and mentor.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Tom was a finalist<\/a> for the BDC Mentorship Award<\/a> which honours a Canadian mentor for their hard work, contributions and dedication to business mentoring. \u201cBeing nominated for the national award was a really rewarding moment,\u201d Tom said. \u201cI felt that I had won just by being nominated\u2014especially when I saw the quality of the candidates I was nominated with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom encourages other mentors to apply for the BDC Mentorship Award (or for entrepreneurs to nominate their mentor), as not only is it an honour to be selected as a finalist, but it also encourages other people to become or seek out mentors.<\/p>\n

Those interested in nominating themselves or nominating a mentor for the 2016 BDC Mentorship Award can do so until February 26th, 2016 here.<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Written By:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Lauren Marinigh, Social Media & Content Creation Coordinator, Futurpreneur Canada<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Cooper has always believed in the importance of business mentors. After all, he still follows the advice of his own mentor years later, even though he\u2019s since evolved from entrepreneur to consultant, investor and Associate Professor in Strategy in Memorial University\u2019s Faculty of Business Administration. Tom has had many mentors over the years, some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4087,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mentoring"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}