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1. Navigating the University Experience, with Guidance from a Mentor
“I think of mentors as a reflection of
yourself in the future. When I find mentors,
I say to myself, that’s going to be me
someday.”
- Maranyeli Estrada-Sagrero
“I’m big on getting advice,” says Maranyeli
Estrada-Sagrero, a junior at San Jose State
University. “I always look for people who can
give me guidance. Not just about school, but
about how I can make myself into who I want to
be.”
Estrada-Sagrero’s ambition comes in part from
her desire to achieve the educational dreams
of her parents, who arrived in the United
States from Mexico when Estrada-Sagrero was
six years old. As young parents and recent
immigrants, Estrada-Sagrero’s mother and
father weren’t able to attend college themselves.
“They always told me that getting a good
education was so important,” Estrada-Sagrero
says.
When Estrada-Sagrero transferred from a small
junior college to a much bigger university
campus in order to complete her education,
she suddenly had questions about her
classwork, post-graduation career plans, and
how to balance studying and part-time work
without getting overwhelmed. Since her parents
couldn’t offer advice, Estrada-Sagrero turned to
LinkedIn’s career mentorship program, which
matches young adults with LinkedIn members
for one-to-one career coaching, to help answer
her questions. That’s how she met Christian
Buhlmann, a Portland-Oregon technology
executive and owner of business consultancy
Sea Change Effect.

2. “I attribute my own career success in large part to the mentors I’ve had,” Buhlmann says. “When I got into
the corporate world, I always looked for mentors who could help me understand and practice the abilities I
needed to advance further.” He decided to become a mentor himself when one of his own mentors said to
him, “How will you start giving back?”
LinkedIn’s career mentorship program was a great answer. It gave Buhlmann the ability to set up virtual
coaching sessions that worked with his busy schedule, especially since he could coach by phone or video
call. After being connected by the LinkedIn mentorship program, Buhlmann and Estrada-Sagrero traded
some initial emails. On the surface, they seemed like very different people. “Chris is older than I am, and
not from the same background,” Estrada-Sagrero says. But the mid-career executive and the ambitious
daughter of immigrant parents hit it off from their first conversation.
Estrada-Sagrero picked Buhlmann’s brain about the shift to a university with tens of thousands of
students. “Community colleges are so much smaller,” Estrada-Sagrero says. “I knew I needed help.”
Estrada-Sagrero also worried about making time for schoolwork in light of her part-time job as office
manager for a software company. “I was feeling overwhelmed,” she says. “I asked Chris, how do I get
through this?”
Buhlmann sympathized with Estrada-Sagrero’s concerns about the challenging new environment. He
suggested that Estrada-Sagrero dial down her work hours and talked through some ideas for how she
could get active in campus life so that her college experience could be more fun. That was just what
Estrada-Sagrero needed to hear. “He said, in the end, do what makes you happy – otherwise it’s not
worth it,” she says. “I felt really good hearing that.”
Being Mentored, And Paying It Forward
The beauty of their career coaching relationship, say Buhlmann and Estrada-Sagrero, is that so much
can be accomplished in short sessions and without the need to meet in person. “It was easy to find an
hour out of my day to talk to him,” Estrada-Sagrero says. Buhlmann agrees: “I’m on the go a lot, so it can
be a struggle to commit to something that requires me to show up somewhere – whereas I could do this
because it wasn’t limited to a physical location.”
The happy surprise for both Buhlmann and Estrada-Sagrero was how much they’ve enjoyed the
coaching. “I was prepared to get a student who was like, ‘yeah, whatever’ – but Maranyeli is so engaged
and asking so many questions,” Buhlmann says. “I was thrilled to see someone like her taking the bull by
the horns and going after her opportunity – especially knowing how her family came here and had this
dream for her.”
The mentor and mentee also see themselves in each other. “We’re not afraid to ask for help – that’s one
way that Maranyeli and I are very similar,” Buhlmann says of his own desire to seek out mentors. “And
people want to help those who want to be helped.” “I think of mentors as a reflection of yourself in the
future,” Estrada-Sagrero says. “When I find mentors, I say to myself, that’s going to be me someday.”
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