Adrienne Tymon Kentor College Mentor Boys & Girls Club of the West Valley
Not many Phi Beta Kappa and UCLA Anderson School lawyers give up their careers to mentor young people – most of them from disadvantaged circumstances – to prepare for and have the tools (including financial support) to attend college. That is what Adrienne Kentor has done for the past 13 years.
Kentor is a full-time volunteer College Mentor at the Boys & Girls Club of the West Valley. She began volunteering at the Boys & Girls Club thirteen years ago as a homework helper and tutor for elementary school students. She loved it so much that eight years ago, when her own children were in college, she decided that her next step would be to use her academic skills to work with high school students in the Club’s new College Bound program.
For the last six years, Kentor has been volunteering five days per week as a college mentor with high school students through the Future Ready program at the Boys & Girls Club of the West Valley. She works every afternoon with students from three high school sites: Canoga Park High School, Cleveland High School, and Chatsworth Charter High School. The vast majority of the Club’s young women are first-generation students from low-income families, and many also come from homes where English is not regularly spoken. Her goal as a college mentor is to help the Club’s students realize their post-high school hopes and dreams, which includes preparing them to apply for college, working with them through the arduous college application process, and, finally, helping them find ways to finance their higher education.
