iMentor NYC welcomes Daniel Lee as Deputy Director. March 12, 2026 By Nicole Wells iMentor is pleased to name Daniel Lee as the Deputy Director for the NYC region! Daniel began his tenure at iMentor as a Program Manager in 2018 and has since built up his program team to serve over 1,700 high school students each year. Read his Q&A about his vision for the future of iMentor's continued collaboration with the NYC Department of Education. Tell iMentor about yourself and how you first started at iMentor. I've spent most of my career in service and education, starting as an AmeriCorps member and a City Year member right out of college, and eventually leading school partnerships work at City Year New York across the South Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. Throughout that work, I kept coming back to the same belief that every student has the potential to reach their highest aspiration, and the systems around them either support that or get in the way. When it came to iMentor, I saw an organization that was just genuinely serious about both the relationship side and the system side of that equation. That's what drew me here. What accomplishment are you most proud of at iMentor? I'm a volunteer mentor in the program; I'm extremely proud to have supported a mentee to graduate high school and get into college. He wasn't originally thinking about attending college. Being a part of his journey - taking what is sometimes so abstract for students and making a tangible plan for him - has been so meaningful. One thing that I'm tremendously proud of is [being] able to build a team that is comprised of young professionals and help launch their careers. Being able to build a team that is partnership-driven, has a student-first mindset, and that's dedicated to [being] in schools every week to make those meaningful relationships happen, is something that I'm incredibly proud of. What do you hope to accomplish in this role as Deputy Director? I want to do what I can to close the implementation gap - the distance that exists between what a great program looks like on paper, and what students and mentors are actually experiencing every day. That means deeply investing in its Program Manager team. It means strengthening its school partnerships so that iMentor feels like an essential part of how schools support students. iMentor is not just a program [or] a vendor that's there to provide mentorship. iMentor want to be an integral part of how schools operate and support students ion creating their strong postsecondary plan. iMentor is currently serving over 1,700 students across eleven partner high schools in New York, and I want to make sure that every one of them gets the full benefit of what iMentor offers. How will you continue to collaborate with partners across NYC? iMentor want students to have a strong postsecondary plan, attend a postsecondary institution, and get a credential that will help them unlock their highest aspiration. New York City Public Schools feels aligned with iMentor. [They are] focused around this idea of career-connected learning - if students have a strong postsecondary plan that is aligned to higher education, then that student is going to be more successful because they can take advantage of having a concrete plan [and] taking those steps immediately after high school. There's work that iMentor is doing with career technical education schools [and] Future Ready, all linked through the Office of Student Pathways at the district. I'm excited to see what this next iteration of New York City Public Schools will look like. What is your vision for amplifying its impact across the city? I think New York City is one of the best environments in the country for what iMentor does. iMentor has one of the strongest public university systems anywhere in CUNY [City University of New York]. iMentor has a corporate community that wants to engage meaningfully with young people. iMentor has school partners who are increasingly aligned around college access and career-connected learning. Its city is aligned on this idea of career-connected learning being essential for students, because every student needs a meaningful career. My vision is to be much more intentional about all of that. I want iMentor to expand into more schools where its model can make the biggest difference. [I want to] deepen cross-sector partnerships that'll bring in more mentors and more opportunities for its youth. New York City has over a million public school students. The opportunity in front of iMentor is enormous, and I'm hoping that I can support its region to rise to the occasion. Be a force for good in NYC - email Daniel Lee at [email protected] to learn more about how you can become a mentor or partner!

In fall 2024, iMentor partnered with CUNY, the nation's largest urban public university, to pilot a career development mentorship program.