Michelle Obama Taking Mentoring Act On The Road

A few weeks ago, First Lady Michelle Obama launched a White House mentoring program for 20 girls from local high schools. If the lucky mentees have the common sense to cultivate relationships with the top White House women assigned as their mentors, they will have hit the networking jackpot.

Interesting, I thought, but a very small project with just a few girls. Now, Mrs. Obama is going to expand her efforts and take her mentoring act regularly on the road, either monthly or every other month.

Her first stop is in Denver on Monday. She will gather high-profile females there -- the city hosted the 2008 Democratic National Convention, where Obama accepted the presidential nomination -- and try to replicate an event she hosted in the White House on March 19.

Back then, Mrs. Obama invited a group of big-name females to go to area schools to talk about their career paths and their lives. Among the group were singers Alicia Keys and Sheryl Crow, Army Gen. Ann Dunwoody, astronaut Mae Jemison, and Olympic athlete Dominique Dawes. In the evening, Mrs. Obama hosted a party at the White House for these women and some of the girls.

She talked about the fine art of power networking. "And tonight is your night. This is an evening which we hope you will use as an opportunity to network with each other, each other as young women, that you network with the great women who are sitting at your table, and that you spend some time asking them questions. Don't be shy. Poke and prod and figure out how they got to be where they are, and what you can do in your lives to get yourselves ready for that next step," she advised.

The next step for Mrs. Obama is getting her mentoring focus out of Washington and less White House-centric. In Denver, Mrs. Obama will host a lunch in the Governor's Mansion with Colorado First Lady Jeanne Ritter and juniors and seniors from local public and private high schools; some will be Girl Scouts.

In the afternoon, her cadre of female mentors will fan out to local schools to tell their stories to more kids.

Among the women who will be on hand in Denver: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Labor Secretary Hilda Solis; Ellen Ochoa, deputy director of the Johnson Space Center; former Ambassador to Hungary Nancy G. Brinker, founder of Susan. G. Komen for the Cure, whom Obama honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom recently; actresses Susan Sarandon, Fran Drescher, Alfre Woodard, Traci Ellis Ross and Karen Olivo; Rep. Betsy Markey (D-Colo.); Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.); Christina Romer, chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisors; and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

Denver is the latest chapter of the orchestrated roll-out of Mrs. Obama's mentoring projects. She agreed to pose for a Glamour Magazine cover as Glamour gave her a "special recognition" award for her commitment to mentoring young women. (This award was given after that one March mentoring event.) Mrs. Obama also talked about mentoring in the Glamour interview, conducted by CBS Anchor Katie Couric. "I think that mentoring is such a critical part of the role I can play in this position," she told Couric.

I asked Jocelyn Frye, Mrs. Obama's top domestic policy advisor, what Mrs. Obama's goal is in enlarging her mentoring project.

"I think the main goal is to really try to encourage people across the country to engage young people in a very concrete way," Frye told Politics Daily. "The mentoring program here was just one way to do so and really reflected the first lady's interest in trying to engage young people, particularly young women, and really encourage them and inspire them, expose them to new opportunities and to really ignite in them a passion for doing whatever they want to do."

I was counseled not to see Mrs. Obama's traveling mentoring project as a concert tour, with a set schedule of cities and dates. "We don't have a definitive number," said Frye. "We're starting with Denver. There are several other cities that we have in mind, but we don't have the exact number."

The mentoring project is getting up and running with the goal to do something once a month. Mrs. Obama took a few of the girls -- sophomores and juniors from schools in Washington, Maryland and Virginia -- with her when she went to speak at the Department of Energy recently. "We are trying to find little ways to expose all of them to different opportunities," Frye said.

Female mentoring projects are not new and the reason they are needed are not new. Women are still lagging behind in the professional and political world.

Marie Wilson is founder of the nonpartisan The White House Project -- she created Take Your Daughter To Work Day -- and has been involved in prodding women into leadership roles for years. I asked her what she thought of Mrs. Obama's mentoring project.

"She's dealing with the fact that there are not enough visible women leaders," Wilson told me. Wilson has been running mentoring projects all over the country, focusing more on college-age females.

On Friday, Wilson's group released a study titled "The White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women's Leadership." It shows that while gains have been made, the critical mass of women leaders has not grown.

In a study of leadership in 10 business sectors, "women are stalled at 18 percent -- with numbers much lower among women of color," the report found. The sectors are academia, business, film and television entertainment, journalism, law, military, non-profit, politics, religion and sports.

Relative to males, women are just not found at the top, even though polling shows the public is comfortable with the notion of female leaders.

And that's where mentoring comes, in the study concludes: "Women who are visible as leaders -- from the university to the newsroom -- serve as powerful role models and mentors to young women who are coming up the pipeline, while normalizing women's leadership for men and women alike."

Right now Mrs. Obama is aiming at high school girls. She promised to expand the program to boys, though it's not known when that will happen. But by focusing on that age group, results are years away.

I asked Frye what she thought of that 18 percent finding.

Said Frye, "It means that we still have a lot of work to do."