Timmy Yuen’s first trip to an Opera Conference, in 2018 in St. Louis, was a confusing one. Yuen was serving at the time as school programs manager for San Francisco Opera and had entered the opera field only two years previously. He hadn’t had time to establish many connections within the industry, yet. “Networking didn’t come naturally to me,” Yuen says. “I didn’t feel all that seen. I felt like an ‘other.’”

His experience at last year’s conference, in Pittsburgh, was considerably more upbeat. One difference was that he was by then firmly established at SFO, where he had worked in several positions in education and finance before landing in HR. But he also credits the support of a mentor: Matthew Ozawa, chief artistic administration officer at Lyric Opera of Chicago. “Matthew opened up connections to folks I hadn’t met, especially other Asian American folks in the opera community,” Yuen says. “I have a sense of belonging now.”

The two men had connected the year before, through OPERA America’s 2022 Mentorship Program for Opera Leaders of Color. The program, established in 2021, pairs rising BIPOC administrators with mentors who are further established in the industry to help new leaders build connections and advance within the opera field. “We were paired from houses of the same scale,” Ozawa says. “The cultures that we were both navigating were very similar across our two companies, and would be very different in different-sized houses.”

Over the course of a year, mentors and protégés have regular meetings, both remote and in-person, forming action plans for the protégé’s professional growth and career trajectory. Ozawa’s mentorship helped Yuen navigate through a time of change in SFO’s HR department. Midway through the year, his supervisor, Ramin Daoud, left the company. Previously, Daoud had acted as an intermediary with executive leadership, but now Yuen had to communicate with company brass directly. Ozawa proved to be an invaluable resource. “I used Matthew as a sounding board for learning how to be persuasive with leadership,” Yuen says. “He helped me develop confidence as an Asian male navigating the workspace.”

And for Matthew Ozawa, the benefits of the Mentorship Program worked both ways. “Timmy and I both learned a lot,” he says. “To create that path forward for the next generation is absolutely critical.”