This Engineer Says Your Best Mentor Doesn't Work at Your Company. Here's Where to Find One Instead

August 13, 2026

IEEE Life Fellow John McDonald has spent more than five decades in power engineering, but ask how he most wants to spend his time now, and the answer is simple: with young people. A longtime power industry leader who now runs his own consulting practice and serves as the 2026 president of the IEEE Foundation, McDonald devotes three to four hours nearly every day to mentoring students and early-career engineers.

His own path started with a nudge. As a second-year engineering student in 1971, buried under a demanding curriculum, he was inducted into IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu, an honor society which merged with IEEE in 2010, where he now serves as a Governor-at-Large on the Board of Governors. That early vote of confidence stuck with him, and giving it back has become a defining part of his career.

The results run deep. McDonald has pointed students toward scholarships they didn’t know existed and helped international students reach graduate programs in the U.S. — in one case joining a video call to reassure a young woman’s parents in New Delhi before she moved to the U.S. for graduate school. Another mentee, a power engineering student he took under his wing, went on to invite McDonald to his wedding. He went.

We spoke with McDonald about the difference between the “science” and the “art” of engineering, why your best mentor probably doesn’t work at your company and how to find the courage to ask.

In your own words, what is mentoring?

McDonald: A lot of the young students and young professionals have heard the word before, but they really don’t know what it means, and why it’s needed. Here’s how I think about it: what you learned at the university is what I call the science of engineering — textbooks, courses, professors. All the students learn the same thing, right? But then you interview for an internship or for full-time work. What industry wants is not the science of engineering. We don’t solve partial derivative equations in industry. What industry wants is: how do you apply that science in the real world? And I call that the art of engineering. And that’s kind of a revelation to students and young professionals. You can’t read a book to learn the art of engineering, and you can’t learn it quickly either. But if you want value in the marketplace, you have to be good at the art of engineering. How can you accelerate your understanding of the art of engineering? You’ll find a mentor.

You’ve said you spend three to four hours per day mentoring people. Are you always talking about engineering?

McDonald: Once you get to know each other, a lot of it is personal life. And it’s not technical training at all. It’s career goals, dealing with a manager. It’s work issues, career advancement, what goals they should have. Things like that.

How should people go about finding a mentor?

McDonald: Ideally, you don’t force it. It should happen naturally. Get involved in as many IEEE activities as you can, locally, nationally and globally. The more you participate, the more people you interact with, both your age and more experienced. In person or virtually, you’ll find someone experienced you have chemistry with and can learn from. Then have the courage to ask. That’s a big step, because young people worry, “What if they say no?” But you’ll never have the opportunity unless you ask.

How is the mentoring relationship different from your manager or your academic advisor?

McDonald: Within your company, you want champions. Hopefully, your manager cares; others too, senior people of the company. A champion or sponsor is someone who wants you to be successful. You can cultivate champions within IEEE through volunteer positions — presenting papers, being a reference or reviewer for senior members or for fellows. But your best mentor usually isn’t at your company. It’s better to have one outside, in industry. So cultivate as many champions and sponsors as you can, but in the beginning, focus on just one mentor.

Can a strong mentor really change someone’s career?

McDonald: Those who’ve had a mentor gain a lot more insight into how to be successful. And a mentor can open doors that otherwise stay closed. I’ve also told students about scholarship programs worth thousands of dollars that they didn’t know existed. Those opportunities aren’t available to most people their age, but a mentor makes them visible.

Do companies have a responsibility to make mentoring time available during work hours?

McDonald: It depends on the company. I tell people, “Don’t be naive, like I was when I started working full time. Don’t think that the company is going to take care of you. They don’t; you’re on your own.” Internal training that’s available in your company — you research that yourself, you find the courses you need to take and you [push] them with your manager. Because in most cases, the manager only cares about what you’re doing today.

I was rarely encouraged to go to IEEE meetings, but I went. But I counsel young people: you do it, but when you’re at an IEEE event, think about all the value that you can bring back to your company. And so [I brought] value back for the company, and the senior folks realized [what came from] the IEEE event over time. They were very happy I was doing IEEE things, because it was helping the company. So that’s what’s important — to bring value back.

You were in a reverse mentoring program. What did you learn?

McDonald: This is why I love being around young people — it keeps me current. When I was at Purdue there were no calculators; I used a slide rule. My young mentor kept me up to date on new technology. I’ve flown 4.7 million miles on Delta, and he found me a phone app where I could pull up any airport’s board and it was as if I were standing there looking at the gates and delays.

The bigger one was our internal blog platform. I wrote a regular blog called Grid Undercurrents. His colleagues were writing the code for the platform, so he knew every new feature before anyone. My peers would say, “John, how did you know it supported this?” People my age were jealous of what I was doing — not just that the features existed, but that I knew how to use them.

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