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Bryce Bisset ’23 (ENG) studies biomedical engineering at UConn. And he bakes cookies.
He and a few friends started a UConn-centric bakery a few years ago called Underground Cookies, which delivers the freshly baked treats on Friday and Saturday nights to dorms and apartments around the Storrs campus.
An active member of the Peter J. Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, who also leads a campus entrepreneurship club, Bisset says he’s always seen the value in networking and mentorship. But his own habitual path left him feeling “unable to mentor” in the early days of his entrepreneurial journey.
“I think a lot of the people who come into the Werth Institute do so either through really traditional business routes or through things that usually have some kind of product with the goal of scaling outside of UConn,” he says. “My business in particular has always been directly attributed to UConn—I’m just kind of a local bakery. And the path I’ve taken for many of my entrepreneurial goals has made it so that sometimes it seems like what I’m trying to do is a situation where I can’t train myself.”
But what he discovered through NetWerx—the Werth Institute’s flagship student and alumni mentoring program—surprised him.
“They’ve put me in touch with mentors before who somehow found a way to give me some advice or insight into some opportunities that I just hadn’t seen before,” he says. “A big part of me was trying to figure out what part of my life I wanted my business to take up, and for a while I thought it could be almost anything. But because I have so many other goals—as a student, as a person, as a brother, and as a friend—it was hard for me to figure out how I could divide my time between all the things I wanted to work on. They provided some advice that really allowed me to balance and see everything as a range of opportunities that I have, rather than just focusing on the business side of things.”
Bissett now has several UConn alumni he met through NetWerx who he considers mentors—and his experience isn’t entirely unique. Students continue to return to a program that participants on both sides of the mentor-mentee relationship say is unlike any other mentoring experience they’ve seen.
“I think there is so much opportunity and value that comes from this mentoring program in particular,” says Bianca D’Agostino ’18 (BUS), who joined NetWerx early as a mentor and is an ambassador for the program. “There is a lot of mentoring that happens at UConn, especially in alumni programs and things like that. But I think this one is super, super special – it has such a special sauce.”
“Who should they talk to?”
Since its inception just over two years ago, NetWerx has connected more than 301 UConn student mentees with 125 alumni mentors who have engaged with its ecosystem.
While the program has evolved over time—growing and changing to meet the needs of both students and mentors, and adapting to the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic—the goals and mission of the program
are fundamentally the same, explains Julie Gehring, director of mentoring and student development at the Werth Institute.
“Unlike traditional mentoring programs, our goal is to help students who are curious about entrepreneurship develop an entrepreneurial mindset, rather than launch a new product or business,” Gehring says.
“These skills—reliance, communication, adaptability—are especially helpful for freshmen and sophomores as they transition into college life and try to figure out who they want to become. We want to connect students with alumni to not only increase their social capital by networking with other Huskies, but also build their self-esteem. There are so many questions and challenges to deal with during this period of their lives. And who should they talk to?’
NetWerx works by recruiting both current students who apply to participate and recent UConn alumni who are interested in connecting to create meaningful mentor-mentee relationships.
“Mentoring sometimes has a connotation that you’re going to meet someone who’s a lot older than you, but our program isn’t like that,” Gehring explains. “We’re looking for alumni who are zero to 15 years old, who have walked Fairfield Way, who have eaten at Ted’s, and who know the campus, whether it’s Storrs or our regional campuses.”
Appointed mentors come from diverse entrepreneurial industry backgrounds – which include but are not limited to consulting, fintech, project management, healthcare, marketing communications, engineering and startups. Mentors engage in a series of five, thirty-minute, one-on-one virtual mentoring sessions over a ten-week period. They receive orientation and training on how to be effective mentors before being paired with students through an extensive matching process.
“We don’t use an algorithm—our matchmaking team gets to know both the mentor and the mentee through a series of interviews and training that allows the matches to be more intentional,” says Gehring, who also notes that students and mentees often don’t were paired based on their obvious commonalities, but rather what each could offer the other, which could contribute to sharing and growth for both mentor and mentee.
This difference initially surprised Arav Parikh ’25 (ENG), who studies computer science at UConn and has participated in one NetWerx cohort so far.
“We didn’t really have the same experience, which I was quite surprised by – I thought it would be something similar, but it turned out to be good,” says Parikh, who plans to reapply to NetWerx in the future. “His background was more on the business side and I think he taught me a lot of things that I hadn’t really considered. I’m getting more into an engineering field and I think it was great to get that different perspective. He was very open and very willing to share a lot of his experiences, both in college and in the workplace.”
“No strings attached”
In one-on-one sessions, NetWerx mentors offer their students business and career advice and often help with resume and interview preparation or other networking opportunities.
But they also offer advice on soft skills and personal development—things like organization, time management, navigating the unfamiliarity of campus and college life, and building confidence in one’s own abilities.
“Many of my mentees were really just at a loss as to how to take advantage of what the Storrs campus had to offer,” says Lorraine Carlucci ’17 (CLAS), who graduated from UConn with a degree in communications and is now the marketing manager for Village Marketing, working with wide variety of social media influencer campaign clients.
“They didn’t know how best to approach their professors to build a deeper relationship with them outside of the classroom,” she says. “They weren’t sure how to find the right internship or volunteer opportunity for them. And many of them simply didn’t even know what the campus had to offer and what they could pursue outside of the classroom.
Carlucci, who mentored several students during her time at NetWerx, said one of her mentees was disappointed with her performance during an internship interview—after the interview, they talked about her experience in one of their mentorships. sessions.
“We went through all the different questions and answers and tried to determine where she felt she wasn’t performing her best, where she felt she was falling short, but also where she excelled,” says Carlucci. “And then, towards the end of our mentorship, she had another interview and she felt so confident in her performance. It felt like everything we talked about she was able to come up with in the moment she was asked these questions and then apply some of what she learned from our sessions.
Carlucci says she joined NetWerx because she wanted to help students who were in the same position she saw herself in as a first-generation student at UConn.
“When I went to UConn, I had no idea what was available to me or what I was doing,” she says. “I tried my best to figure it out, but I definitely had mentors on campus who pointed me in the right direction. From my point of view, they kind of fell into my lap – it was just a series of events that connected me to them, and I’m really lucky to have had them in my four years. Not everyone ends up in these scenarios where they find someone they really connect with who can help guide them through their college experience and even beyond once they graduate.
“I think the NetWerx program is so wonderful for anyone who is looking for that type of guidance, but doesn’t necessarily know how to find the right person on their own. I think it’s just wonderful to have someone who’s on your side and is there to help you, basically, with no strings attached.”
“I realized that I actually have a lot to give”
Both D’Agostino and Carlucci learned about NetWerx through conversations on LinkedIn with staff at the Werth Institute. D’Agostino, who works as a senior marketing manager and SEO strategist, initially didn’t think she had enough experience as a recent graduate to be a mentor, but she soon found out the opposite.
“I wanted to join NetWerx because, especially at the height of COVID, I felt like I wasn’t doing enough to help the world,” she says. “At first I was hesitant to join because I didn’t think I had the necessary experience to do it. But
I realized that I actually have a lot to give. I have been in the shoes of many of these students and my unique perspective can potentially add value to the student. When you can help do that for someone else, it’s great, and I think it also helps you realize the value and impact you can have on the world.”
Although D’Agostino has offered her guidance to several student mentors during her time in the program, she has found that working as a mentor has helped her in her own career and decision-making in her own life.
“Usually something my mentees would say is, ‘I haven’t really decided my life and I feel like I need to,’ and I would help guide them through that process, but then also tell them that it’s good not to have it all figured out,” says D’Agostino. “It came at such a pivotal time for me as well, because a lot of my mentoring, when I was more active with NetWerx, it came at a time when I was really thinking about my work and my career and where I really wanted to go.
She continues, “A lot of these tactics and resources, but also recommendations for accepting where you are, is something I relate to in my own life. You can’t tell a mentee to organize his life in one way and have all these goals to help make his life better if you’re not willing to do the same. So, that really pushes me to be the best that I can be, so that I can be a good role model for my mentees, and so when I say that it’s okay that you don’t have it all figured out, I embody that same acceptance. “
Now a career coach with the program, D’Agostino encourages other UConn alumni looking for a way to give back, inspire the next generation of UConn graduates or simply reconnect with the Husky community to give NetWerx a try.
“Everyone has something unique to learn from you and your experience,” she says. “You will learn a lot about yourself. You will be able to positively influence others and learn your own worth and see how you can grow as a person as well.”
For more information about NetWerx and other student and alumni opportunities available through the Werth Institute, visit entrepreneurship.uconn.edu.
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