Join as a Project Adviser or Mentor

Contribute your experience, expertise, and perspective to an ASG Lab project, fellowship, research initiative, or innovation team.

You do not need to lead the project or join it full-time.

Project Advisers and Mentors provide targeted support at moments when their experience can help a team see more, ask better questions, make connections, and navigate difficult decisions.

Your Pathway

1. Explore → 2. Match → 3. Connect → 4. Agree → 5. Engage → 6. Reflect → 7. Continue

1. Explore

Start with the challenges where your experience could be useful.

Explore the ASG Co-Creation Labs:

AI for Governance Lab
AI • Data • Government • Institutional Intelligence

Zero Hunger Lab
Food • Nutrition • Agriculture • Hunger

City Futures Lab
Cities • Futures • Urban Systems • Local Governance

Blue Economy Lab
Oceans • Coasts • Fisheries • Coastal Communities

Forest Sustainability Lab
Forests • Communities • Biodiversity • Landscapes

Affordable Housing Lab
Housing • Cities • Communities • Inclusion

Social Finance Lab
Capital • Impact • Finance • Innovation

Financial Inclusion Lab
Finance • Access • Households • Enterprises

Universal Health Care Lab
Health • Systems • Access • Governance

Civic Media Lab
Media • Information • Citizens • Public Life

Climate Action Labs
Climate • Adaptation • Resilience • Local Action

Bamboo Impact Lab
Bamboo • Livelihoods • Climate • Enterprise

ScaleUp Lab
Scale • Replication • Adaptation • Institutionalization

Explore All ASG Co-Creation Labs

You're done when: You have identified areas where your experience could help an ASG team.

2. Match

Identify how you could contribute.

You might bring:

• subject-matter expertise

• government experience

• industry experience

• research knowledge

• community experience

• leadership experience

• entrepreneurship

• financing expertise

• technical knowledge

• international experience

• local knowledge

• networks and relationships

• experience scaling organizations or programs

You do not need to be an expert in every dimension of the challenge.

Often the most useful adviser is someone who can see something the project team cannot.

You're done when: There is a clear reason why your perspective could add value.

3. Connect

Match with a specific project, fellowship, research initiative, or team.

Start with a short conversation.

Understand:

• What is the team trying to accomplish?

• Where are they now?

• What are they struggling with?

• What assumptions are they making?

• What kind of support would actually be useful?

Avoid prescribing solutions before understanding the situation.

Help me find a project
[See Current Projects] [Find a Lab] [Ask ASG] [Explore Fellowships]

You're done when: Both sides see potential value in working together.

4. Agree

Choose the appropriate role.

Project Adviser

Best when the project needs periodic specialist or strategic input.

An Adviser might:

• review plans or concepts

• challenge assumptions

• provide technical perspectives

• participate in occasional project reviews

• connect the team with relevant people

• help interpret emerging developments

• advise at important decision points

Project Mentor

Best when a person or team would benefit from an ongoing learning relationship.

A Mentor might:

• meet periodically with a Fellow or project team

• ask questions that deepen reflection

• help people interpret experience

• share relevant experience

• help navigate institutional or leadership challenges

• encourage learning across the life of the project

Some engagements may combine both roles.

Clarify:

Role • Time Commitment • Duration • Expectations • Confidentiality • Compensation, if any

Keep the arrangement lightweight unless greater formality is necessary.

You're done when: Everyone understands the relationship.

5. Engage

Join the project at useful moments.

This might include:

Project Reviews

Join a periodic review and help the team examine progress, assumptions, risks, and emerging opportunities.

Mentoring Conversations

Meet with an individual Fellow or project team at agreed intervals.

Design Sessions

Participate when the team is developing or redesigning an approach.

Sensemaking Sessions

Help interpret new information, stakeholder reactions, failures, or unexpected developments.

Technical Reviews

Provide specialist feedback when the project reaches an important technical decision.

Introductions

Connect the team with people, institutions, knowledge, or opportunities that could help.

The objective is not to take over the project.

It is to increase the team's capacity to think and act well.

6. Reflect

Periodically ask:

• Is the relationship still useful?

• What is the team learning?

• What is the Adviser or Mentor learning?

• Are different questions emerging?

• Does the team need a different kind of expertise?

• Should the engagement continue, change, or end?

A good advisory relationship should evolve with the project.

You're done when: The relationship continues because it creates value, not because it was originally scheduled.

7. Continue

A project engagement may lead to other forms of participation across ASG.

You might:

Advise another project

Mentor an Impact Fellow

Join a Lab as an Impact Fellow

Teach or facilitate

Join a research initiative

Support a Design Project

Help develop an institutional partnership

Support ScaleUp

Connect ASG with your institution or network

The aim is to make expertise across the ASG ecosystem easier to access and recombine around emerging challenges.

Work Across Labs

You do not need to belong permanently to one Lab.

An adviser with expertise in climate finance, for example, might work across:

Climate Action Labs

• Social Finance Lab

• Blue Economy Lab

Someone experienced in scaling government innovation might work across:

AI for Governance Lab

• City Futures Lab

• ScaleUp Lab

Follow the challenge across Lab boundaries.

The Adviser and Mentor Principle

Do not take over the problem.

Help the team see more of it.

Bring experience without assuming that another context is the same.

Ask questions before prescribing answers.

Open doors where useful.

Strengthen the team's capacity so that it becomes less dependent on the adviser, not more.

Explore ASG Co-Creation Labs →