Our Mission
At The Catalyst Collective, we believes that mentoring can be a powerful intervention in the lives of young women. We recruit, train, match and support professional Black women with Black teenagers for year-long mentoring relationships, and run careers programmes and insight days in a range of professional fields.

We know that an excellent mentor can change our trajectory, challenge our thinking and encourage us to go further than perhaps we thought ourselves capable of. We are committed to facilitating meaningful mentoring relationships between young Black women, and mentors they can identify with to support them in achieving their goals.​

Our Story

The Catalyst started in December 2020 as a simple idea - that by connecting Black girls with role models to act as mentors, they would accelerate towards and achieve their goals even faster. We launched our first pilot cohort of 6 pairs in January 2021, and we've kept going from there. This year we're matching 100 Black girls with mentors, and providing a wider programme of support to even more.
Our approach centres creating and sustaining a joyful, authentic and supportive mentoring community of Black women, and we're focused on providing opportunities for our mentors and mentees to learn and grow from each other.​As one of our mentees explained: ...this matters a lot to me. The only other black people I come into contact with are my family. The majority of my teachers are white and male, and I don’t feel able to identify with them... It’s nice to see someone who is the same as me, and to be able to learn from their experiences and apply them to my own journey.'