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Tell me about your vision. So my vision is that we will be a world connected in a much bigger way.

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My vision is to stop wasting our most precious natural resources, which is not oil, coal, and gas.

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It's our people. It's our experts. And so my vision would be to get more and more people

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sharing their expertise through mentorship all around the world.

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Wow. That's a very... not unique, I would say, but it's very profound. I really... if the impact

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can be measured, you can measure the impact of what you're about to do. But Deborah, I think

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it's going to change a lot of lives. It's going to help a lot of people. More so, it's going to

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save people a lot of time with taking someone else's experience and bridging it in your own,

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so you can save years of your life. I know someone has done that for me,

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and I'm grateful for those experiences. Deborah, where did this vision of you coming in as a mentor

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or connecting mentors to mentees come from? Well, I'm an applied developmental psychologist,

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and I went into research looking at all... and I'm an aging specialist, and I looked at all of the

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terrible things that none of us want to face as we age, and was studying those quite happily. And

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someone came to me and said, why study aging? What benefit does it give us? And I said, oh, well,

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we'll, you know, mitigate depression, and we'll find more cures for Alzheimer's disease and other

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dementias, and we'll help people with frailty. And he said to me, so you're putting a band-aid

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on the ultimate, which is all negative. And I thought to myself, is that really what I'm doing?

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And so, I decided, you know, I decided to go take a look at this and say to my... and say,

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what is it that I really am doing? Am I just giving myself a good time with this research,

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or am I making a difference? And when I went back and started to look at some of the developmental

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literature, I realized that I was looking at everything wrong. I was looking at our physical

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trajectory, which is a steep incline when we're young, you know, we're born, and then we have a

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steep incline, we walk, talk, do all the things, run fast. And then we hit a peak very early.

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And then there's a slow, steady decline. And that's what most of us think of as aging.

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But I never took into account the emotional trajectory. And that starts the same time

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when we're born, and it goes up, up, up, up, up, and it never declines. And so I said,

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I want to know more about that. So when I started to dig into it, I looked at Erickson's stages,

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and I looked at all of the other research, the Harvard Longitudinal Study,

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Laura Carson's work on happiness, all of these things. And I realized that

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at the heart of it is connections, but we all are built to want to give back in midlife.

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And there are three ways we can do that. One is volunteering, one is mentoring, and one is

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philanthropy. And when I realized that, I thought, why wouldn't I want to study mentoring, because

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you're giving a piece of yourself, it's like leaving a little legacy, a little tiny nugget

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of legacy in somebody else that takes your wisdom. And I thought that's fascinating. So that's where

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the vision came from. But ultimately, it went into practice when I started researching individuals

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who mentor. So I looked at five-star generals and grandmas and everybody in between. And I found

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that they all had the same story. They would cry when they talked about what impact it made on them.

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So I had always been hearing about mentees and what mentorship does for the mentee. But I realized

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there was a lot more going on for the mentors and the benefits are as huge or even huger for the

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mentor. So that's really ultimately where the vision came from, was knowing that we have an

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untapped resource that we can really utilize and it's free.

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Wow.

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Aging specialist, but I didn't even know there's a thing called aging specialist. And that's

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good to know.

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There are plenty of people out there.

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Yeah. And then you talked about the emotional aging. I think that's the first time in my life

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I've actually heard that term. Tell me more about that. I'm just very curious.

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So when we're born, we all know the physical trajectory. That's like, we don't even have to

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imagine that. What most of us don't think about is our emotional trajectory. So think about yourself

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when you were two and you didn't get something that you wanted. What did you do? You might have

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cried. You might have thrown yourself on the floor. You might have like wrapped yourself around a

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parent's leg and said, I'll hang on until I get what I want. Whatever it was, it isn't what we do

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now. If your boss says, hey, I need you to work a few extra hours. You don't throw yourself on the

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floor and latch yourself around your boss's leg and say, no, I don't want to do that. We have an

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emotional development that helps us to cope with things that come our way that when we're little,

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when we're young, are really big deals. By the time we hit midlife, we become experts in all sorts of

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problem solving and emotional coping. We become experts in relationships. We know how to navigate

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tricky relationships. We understand the importance of intimacy and connection and having, you know,

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few deep friendships rather than a whole lot of people who are, we're superficially connected

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with. So that's really what our emotional trajectory is. And we can expect to be happier as we get

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older. So when I teach students who are in college, I say to them, hey, you can all outrun me, but I'm

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happier than you. And it's an interesting thing for them to hear because in the end, I don't think

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that they care that they can run faster than me either. But most people, if you ask any parent,

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what do you want for your child when they grow up, they say, I want them to be happy. And you can

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expect that that will happen that on that emotional trajectory. That's entirely new information to me.

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And I think, wow, that's a I'm so excited to dive deeper into this, Deborah. Oh, good. My jam. You

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know, when I started in the field of aging, I tell people this, you know, if I went to a cocktail,

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a cocktail party was the worst place for me because if I said I'm an aging specialist, people were

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like, oh, no, I just got stuck with the most boring person in the world. How can I escape this person?

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And so now if a person expresses interest, I'm just so excited and more and more people are.

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Yeah, I wow. I don't know why people get bored with it. I think it's very, very exciting to know

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about these things. So how did you get started on this journey of aging specialist and

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becoming a mentor to other people when you started tapping into these things?

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So, you know, I did not even know what a psychologist was. And I went to visit my

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grandmother in an assisted living when I was a teenager and she wasn't behaving like herself.

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You know, I had the most fun grandma. She was the type of grandma that you could go to her house and

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you wouldn't have to pack clothes because she had clothes that fit us, you know, when we were young

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and that we would be OK wearing out. We just had to pack shoes. That was it. And so when she wasn't

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happy, she was angry and irritable and, you know, snappish. This wasn't the fun grandma that, you

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know, we all love to see. So I went to the person at work there and I said, there's something wrong

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with grandma. She's not behaving like herself. And they said, I know she's depressed, but don't

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worry, we'll fix her. And I was like, how do you fix her? And what is depression? What are you

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talking about? So they did. They fixed her. And I came back and I said, I want to do what you do.

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I want to fix grandmas. And so I was working with kids at the time and I made a decision to switch

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and and work with older adults. And that's how I got into research. But there wasn't anything about

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the positive aspects of aging. It was all how do you fix a depressed person? How do you fix somebody

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who's frail? How do you how do you fix all the things that we don't want to have? And then it

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wasn't until I went to that dinner party and a person told me, you know, hey, why bother what

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you're doing? Why bother putting band-aids on people? You know, tell me what I want to know.

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Why do I want to get older? And that's when I made the switch and decided to start looking into

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things that people have been looking at for a long time. But nobody gave it any real thought or

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credibility. And so I've fortunately seen a lot of change in the field of aging where people are

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starting to look at the positive aspects of it. And so when when I started to research and talk to

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about 45 people about mentoring, everyone told me I was absolutely crazy for thinking about this.

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They said nobody wants to mentor. It's a burden. Nobody wants to give back. They're, you know,

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they've got their own stuff to do. So I was hearing from people the importance of getting a mentor,

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you know, for a mentee. But what they were like burdening somebody. It didn't make sense to me.

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So when I looked at what we can expect, there's a term called generativity. And that means that we

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can expect to want to care for somebody without expecting anything in return. And anybody who's a

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parent knows when they have a brand new baby, and it's crying and crying, you know, we love the baby,

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you know, the baby isn't, you know, doing things for us, other than giving us a sense of love and

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purpose and meaning. And that's what we get when we hit midlife, when all of our expertise has been

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gathered. So every little box you check through life, go to school, go to college, buy a car,

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buy a house, have a partner, you know, decide to have kids or not, whatever those boxes are. But

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the time you hit midlife, you say, Well, what does this matter? Do I mean anything in the world? Do

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I matter in the world? Do I have anything? Like, is this it? And that's when we hit the stage of

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generativity, where we want to give back that stuff that we've learned, and that we've been

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accumulating for so long. And it means something to us to have somebody else carry that it's a legacy,

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it's a form of feeling, you know, like we're valued, we matter. So when I started to talk to

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people about it, people said, I want to do that. I just don't have access to kids. So most really

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high level people, and the mentor project really works with the top 1% of leaders in their fields,

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they don't have access to kids, they can't go to a park and say, Hey, kid want to learn quantum

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mechanics, it's not going to work well. So they said, I'd love to be able to get in front of kids.

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And Bill Cheswick said, he was one of the fathers of the firewall. And he said, I want to get in

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front of third or fourth graders before they're jaded and think they can't do science and math.

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So he just didn't have an appropriate place to do that. So we formed a small group of people

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who had worked in NASA, you know, Irene Yakbus, who was the lead on the mission to Mercury, my dad,

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he was like, I'll do the website, you know, which is the core group of people who were like,

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let's see what happens with this. And then it was a snowball within six months, we had a woman,

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her name is Jen Snow, can't come on board, and we had 60 mentors. And so we went from 10 to 60,

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and then to 80. And then, then we had a waiting list. And we just couldn't keep up with all the

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mentors who wanted to become mentors with us for no pay, but just the ability to be able to give

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back their expertise and see that it wasn't being lost. Because every person I talked to who was

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hitting retirement, it was like a door was closing on a library full of information. And they were

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feeling irrelevant. And, you know, they weren't feeling validated. And this was the way to do

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that. And it's all free. So that's how we started. Just organically, we never thought we'd get past

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10. We didn't ever expect to make money or to do anything big with this and it exploded.

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Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking

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forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get

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more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to

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participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time

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building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.