Beyond 'Can You Mentor Me?'... Nitish Kumar, Wenjia Zhang, Jared Watts, Carol Valencia & Nabarun Pal

Beyond 'Can You Mentor Me?' - Crafting the Contribution Ladder - Nitish Kumar, Akuity; Wenjia Zhang, Google; Jared Watts, Upbound; Carol Valencia, Elastic; Nabarun Pal, Broadcom Mentorship, a cornerstone of the community's success, offers a transformative path to growth and development. However, finding the right mentor and building a successful mentorship relationship can be challenging. This panel discussion brings together experienced mentors from diverse roles within the Kubernetes community including maintainers, tech leads, and committee members. The panel members will share their insights on how to get the most out of mentorship at different stages of your Kubernetes journey, as you climb the Contributor ladder. By the end of this panel, the audience will understand essential takeaways for effective mentorship at different contributor ladder marks. The project maintainers can take inspiration from how the Kubernetes project maintainers make use of various mentorship techniques such as Role Based Shadowing, Peer-to-Peer Learning, and Mentorship Cohorts that can help any project especially CNCF incubating projects stick new contributors to the project.