Helping Tomorrow's Leaders

John Rice is the founder of Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT), a nonprofit mentoring program aimed at providing minority business students with guidance and advice. In 2002, Mr. Rice and his board realized the need was greater than their original intentions.

And so they took a dive into the major challenges minorities face getting into business schools. These students are under represented in major MBA programs, largely because they are struggling to demonstrate qualifications. Minorities are not graduating at the same rate as nonminority populations.

With that information, John Rice decided to build a set of programs to address the critical transition points; the college to workforce, early career jobs, back to schools and from business schools back to the work force.

MLT is not a scholarship program, but a support system that includes coaching, mentoring, seminars and networking to help its fellows develop “hard skills” such as problem-solving and communication, and “soft skills” such as navigating the business world and avoiding pitfalls that can lead to failure.

This is an excerpt of their "about us" page from their website.

MLT builds leaders who have the commitment, capital and relationships necessary to drive business profitability and significant social change.

MLT equips underrepresented minorities with the hard and soft skills, career roadmap, coaching, mentoring, and door-opening relationships required to become high-impact business and community leaders. Virtually every senior leader would say that they would not be where they are today without some or all of those key ingredients, yet they are not taught in even the best classrooms and instead are delivered through informal channels to which minorities have limited access. MLT democratizes access to these ingredients, filling a major gap in our education system and significantly broadening the pipeline of senior minority leaders who can catalyze change in our communities.

To know more about John Rice and the Management Leadership for Tomorrow or MLT, you may visit http://www.ml4t.org for more information.