Teach to Work ─ How a Mentor, a Mentee, and a Project Can Close the Skills Gap in America

The United States is abundantly rich in adults with ?know how.” By connecting mentors—educated adults with expertise and knowledge—with mentees—teens and young adults who lack motivation, experience, and role models in their lives—we can begin to close this gap dramatically. We can prepare the next generation for the jobs of tomorrow by adding real world, project-based experience to their education.

Teach to Work is a call to action for mentors currently sitting on the sidelines. Whether you are a banker, lawyer, architect, accountant, engineer, IT specialist, or artist, you have the experience and skillset to become an ambassador of talent, grit, and transferable skills. The book provides a step-by-step guide to help professionals share their knowledge with the next generation of workers through this intergenerational experience.

Based on Alper’s fifteen years of mentoring inner-city high-school students, Teach to Work proves how corporations, professionals, and boomers can have a significant impact on the professional future of America’s youth. Drawing from real-life stories and letters received from students, teachers, and fellow mentors describing pride of accomplishment, Alper helps professionals embark on this journey to transform lives, mentoring one student at a time.

Patricia Alper is a fourth generation Washingtonian who's been in the field of marketing, communications, and sales for thirty-five years. She's successfully served firms in the real estate, hospitality, finance, and non-profit sectors through her consulting practice, The Alper Portfolio Group, Inc. Entrepreneurship has played a pivotal role in her life and career.

For eighteen years, she has been a trustee of the Alper Family Foundation. It is through her philanthropic giving that she became engaged with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) and how she ultimately developed the "Adopt a Class" program, which inspired her new book, Teach to Work, based on the mentorship model she developed. Alper was honored as the 2010 NFTE Philanthropist of the Year, DC region and currently sits on the National Board.

Alper holds a Bachelor of Special Studies degree in English and Theology from Cornell College, Iowa, and has continued masters level marketing classes at American University. She is married and has two stepchildren. She loves competitive golf, art, theater, music, and continues her study of theology.