The Invisible Mentor

Expert Interviews With Successful People and Wisdom of Life Profiles

This is a non-traditional mentoring program, a do-it-yourself (DIY) mentoring program, where you mentor yourself using the information that I bring you. Welcome to your mentors, your invisible mentors – they are here to help you succeed! Here, Chief Mentoring Officer, Avil Beckford has built a bridge for you to connect modern wisdom with ancient wisdom in the form of the people I have personally interviewed, and those who I have researched and profiled for wisdom of life.

I bring you successful people you can learn from through their experiences. Every challenge you can possibly face, someone, somewhere, has successfully overcome that challenge, so you can too. It is my hope, that in time, we will have a diverse amount of invisible mentors in our community. The mentors are meant to inspire you to take a leap and step into your greatness. This is a non-traditional mentoring program where you take the initiative, and take what you need from the interviews with successful people and the wisdom of life profiles.

In the interviews, your mentors share their personal success stories, career advice, success tips, challenges and triumphs and much more. In the profiles, your mentors have passed on, but their wisdom lives on.

As you are reading each interview and profile, place the following three questions in the back of your mind to answer later:

1. In what way am I like this person?
2. What are three things that I can learn from this person?
3. As a result of reading about this person, what is one thing that I commit to doing differently?

It is my hope that you will feel connected to a few of these invisible mentors after you have read their personal success stories, and want to take action as a result, whatever the action is that you need to take, only you can know what that is.

I have built the bridge all you have to do is cross it when you have the urge. Before you read the interviews, read The Interview as Teacher, How to Use Interviews for Self-Improvement and Another Way to Use Interviews for Self Improvement.

Expert Interviews With Successful People – Your Invisible Mentors

1. She founded Women in Technology UK (Part I) (Part II)
2. His key advice is to be authentic and choose relationships over money (Part I) (Part II)
3. She’s a senior account executive at the National Speakers Bureau (Part I) (Part II)
4. Her biggest accomplishment will be when she can live in the now, all the time (Part I) (Part II)
5. Mind your Qs please! She was the first female CEO of a steel company in Canada (Part I) (Part II)
6. She left a successful search consulting business to become a human excellence coach (Part I), (Part II)
7. The life coach who is also an artist (Part I), (Part II)
8. Someone who knows what leadership is about (Part I), (Part II)
9. The “hip accountant” (Part I), (Part II)
10. The entrepreneur’s friend (Part I), (Part II)
11. Head of PR for a technology firm, a writer, and very witty (Part I), (Part II)
12. The social justice film producer (Part I), (Part II)
13. A mentor directed her path to success (Part I), (Part II)
14. Someone who is a career and employment counsellor and a LinkedIn Heavyweight (Part I), (Part II)
15. A leadership and career coach, and a very straight shooter (Part I), (Part II)
16. An internet marketer and social media trainer (Part I), (Part II)
17. Someone who is a relationship builder (Part I), (Part II)
18. An IT executive who sang at her own wedding (Part I), (Part II)
19. Someone who is into food safety (Part I), (Part II)
20. She is an Assistant Deputy Minister (Part I), (Part II)
21. As a youngster he read biographies (children’s) of “great people” which taught him the importance of reading and learning from the experiences of others (Part I), (Part II)
22. The founder of Athena International (Part I), (Part II)
23. A successful business owner who attended 17 schools in three countries while growing up (Part I), (Part II)
24. Founder of Connected Women (Part I), (Part II)
25. Someone who was a former editor of Chatelaine Magazine (Part I), (Part II)
26. She started in the library and ended up in the executive suite (Part I), (Part II)
27. She launched the International Women’s Festival (Part I), (Part II)
28. Someone who died for four minutes (Part I), (Part II)
29. Someone who used to hide under the table from bill collectors, now she is a success story (Part I), (Part II)
30. When she first became a leader, she was referred to as Godzilla, but a mentor helped to smooth off the rough edges, now she is a remarkable leader (Part I), (Part II)
31. His best friend was embezzling so he gave him the opportunity to do the right thing (Part I), (Part II)
32. A busy senior level banking executive who escapes from it all through fiction (Part I), (Part II)
33. Someone who is a CFO of a restaurant chain (Part I), (Part II)
34. Someone who is a marketing and communications consultant (Part I), (Part II)
35. Someone knows what it means to fall down seven times get up eight (Part I), (Part II)
36. Someone who is an entertainer and comic artist (Part I), (Part II)
37. Someone who is a goldsmith and jewelry designer (Part I), (Part II)
38. An entrepreneur who blends health and technology (Part I), (Part II)
39. The medical doctor (Part I), (Part II)
40. The serial entrepreneur with mild superpowers (Part I), (Part II)
41. Serial entrepreneur and expert interviewer (Part I), (Part II) (Part III), (Part IV)
42. Founder of First Fridays (Part I), (Part II)
43. Someone who does cross-culture consulting (Part I), (Part II)
44. This senior executive made a tough decision that no parent should ever have to make (Part I), (Part II)
45. Storyteller and teacher (Part I), (Part II)
46. The reinvention guy (Part I), (Part II)
47. The queen of tips booklets (Part I), (Part II)
48. The artist (Part I), (Part II)
49. She is also a serial entrepreneur (Part I), (Part II)
50. International trade consultant (Part I), (Part II)
51. Someone who failed forward to success (Part I), (Part II)
52. Someone who gets funding for medium-sized firms (Part I), (Part II)
53. Someone who built one of the hottest online communities (Part I), (Part II)
54. Founder of the School of Thinking (Part I), (Part II)
55. The content maven (Part I), (Part II)
56. The searcher and adventurer (Part I), (Part II)
57. Founded FundsforWriters (Part I), (Part II)
58. Someone who works in the publishing industry (Part I), (Part II)
59. Someone who is knowledgeable about social media (Part I), (Part II)
60. Relationships play a prominent role in her life (Part I), (Part II)
61. He defends the wrongfully convicted (Part I), (Part II)
62. He started YTV (Part I), (Part II)
63. She says, “If it doesn’t feel right, walk away, don’t compromise your values” (Part I), (Part II)
64. A teacher and classically trained singer (Part I), (Part II)
65. She was a music teacher (Part I), (Part II)
66. She founded the Downtown Women’s Club (Part I), (Part II)
67. The book marketing guy (Part I), (Part II)
68. Someone who is an actress (Part I), (Part II)
69. The guy who knows a lot about trust (Part I), (Part II)
70. The “raw foods” witch (Part I), (Part II)
71. Someone who does personal branding (Part I), (Part II)
72. The First Nations Ojibwe Elder (Part I), (Part II)
73. The CEO & Chairman of a mining company (Part I), (Part II)
74. A strategic marketing and communications consultant (Part I), (Part II)
75. An associate professor who teaches marketing, innovation and business studies (Part I), (Part II)
76. He produced An Anything But Ordinary Journey documentary (Part I), (Part II)
77. An entrepreneur, and his blog is called How to Split an Atom (Part I), (Part II)
78. An American who has been living in Nepal for two decades (Part I), (Part II)
79. Someone who is an author (Part I), (Part II)
80. He is a VP of Digital Communications (Part I), (Part II)
81. She founded Similar Circles (Part I), (Part II)

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Wise People/Wisdom of Life: Women and Men of Wisdom – Your Invisible Mentors

1. Susan Brownell Anthony, Women’s Rights Activist and Abolitionist
2. Hannah Arendt, Philosopher, Writer and Refugee from Adolph Hitler
3. Ayn Rand, Philosopher, Author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead
4. Abraham Lincoln, 16th President, Led America through the Civil War
5. Abolitionist and Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
6. Sculptor who created the Statue of Liberty
7. Pioneer in Social Reform, Founder of Hull House and First American Woman to be Awarded a Nobel Peace Prize
8. Urban Theorist and Writer
9. She was known as the Desert Queen
10. American Automobile Pioneer and Industrialist
11. Greatest Jazz Pianist Who Ever Lived
12. American First Lady, International Diplomat, Writer and Philanthropist
13. Russian Composer, Pianist and Conductor
14. Essayist, Mythologist and Author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces
15. King of Macedon, Conquered the Known World of His Day
16. Naturalist Who Presented the Origin of Species Theory
17. One of the Greatest Female Poets Who Ever Lived
18. Queen of the Iceni Tribe, Fought to Drive the Romans from British Soil
19. American Essayist, Poet and Lecturer
20. Father of Canadian Medicare
21. Made the first solo transatlantic flight from New York to Paris
22. She was a military leader and a saint
23. Paved the way for the practice of modern medicine
24. He wanted to find a way to duplicate documents without using carbon, so he invented the photocopier
25. Discovered Radium and Polonium, was the first woman to receive a Noble Prize, and the first person to receive two Noble Prizes in two different sciences
26. Someone who invented the machine to make paper bags. A male inventor stole her idea and patented it, but she fought back and won
27. Her boyfriends helped to finance her fashion design business, but she repaid the loans when she achieved success
28. He was one of pioneers in the aviation industry
29. Famous painter, polymath and Renaissance Man
30. The father of basketball
31. Father of the computer
32. The first computer programmer
33. Founder of feminism
34. When you think of Hierarchy of Needs, who comes to mind?
35. She was visually and hearing impaired, but didn’t let that slow her down
36. She disappeared with her aircraft never to be seen again
37. Founder of modern psychology
38. Anthropologist who was Grandmother of the World
39. Pioneer of modern feminism
40. One of the greatest comics that ever lived
41. Father of geography

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