October 23, 2025
12:00 – 1:00 p.m. ET
Open to Michigan Ross Students and Thriving Catalyst Students
In-Person, Michigan Ross
The Role of Mentorship on Professional Path: Lessons from a 50-Year Study of College Graduates
In this presentation, Dr. Alexis Redding will offer insights from a study of young adult development across generations that she co-leads at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She will share highlights from the story of the discovery of a lost archive of interviews from the 1940s – 1970s, the themes she found that help us think about career exploration today, and the lessons learned from interviewing this group of alumni fifty years after graduation as they reflect across the arc of their personal and professional lives. Her focus will be on the lessons learned about mentorship and career satisfaction—two topics that she has written about in The End of Adolescence: The Lost Art of Delaying Adulthood (Harvard University Press), and in articles for The Atlantic, the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Inside Higher Education.
About Redding:
Alexis Redding is a developmental psychologist whose work focuses on how to best support young adults during the college years and in the transition to the workforce. This work combines the intellectual traditions of psychology, education, and ethnography, allowing her to capture the nuances of young adult development in a range of contexts.
She has also done research on student identity development, with a focus on moral identity development and ethical reasoning skills. This work included studies of achievement culture in high school, fraud in the college admissions process, and student cheating in high-stakes educational environments. Her research was used to support the design of the Harvard College Honor Code, to revise ethical guidelines in the field of college admissions, and to create policies that combat academic dishonesty in schools around the country. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Fast Company, Teen Vogue, Inside Higher Ed, and The Harvard Business Review, among other publications.
Redding was a presidential scholar at Harvard University and earned her doctorate in human development & education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). She also holds an Ed.M. in human development & psychology from HGSE, an A.B. from Harvard College, and a Graduate Certificate in college counseling from UCLA.
Today, she is the faculty co-chair of Higher Education at HGSE, where she also teaches courses in youth development, higher education organizations, and research methods. In 2023, she was awarded the Morningstar Family Teaching Award, presented annually to a Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty member who makes an outstanding impact on their students and the Harvard community.
In addition to her research and teaching, Redding counseled students in both the United States and Europe for more than two decades, focusing on supporting young adults during the transitions to college and to professional life.
She currently serves as a graduate student advisor at HGSE and is a member of the Board of First-Year Advisers at Harvard College. She also serves on the Editorial Boards of The Harvard Education Press and The Journal of the First-Year Experience & Students in Transition.
This event is open to Michigan Ross Students and Thriving Catalyst Students. Not yet enrolled in the Thriving Catalyst Endorsement Program? Join here. If you’d like to attend and are not a member of one of these groups, please contact cpo-events@umich.edu.