About the Author

Jean Rhodes, a Ph.D. professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, is considered the nation’s leading expert on youth mentoring. She has published Op-Eds about mentoring in The New York Times and the The Boston Globe.

Shawn Boburg is a reporter at The Record in Bergen County, N.J. He has written and contributed to several national award-winning stories, including the 2003 Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the tragic drowning of four young Dominican boys in the Merrimack River in Lawrence, MA.