Our History
ACE Mentor Program of America
The ACE Mentor Program of America was founded in New York in 1994 by Charlie Thornton of Thornton Tomasetti, a structural engineering firm. After several years of experimenting with various mentoring models, ACE was formally launched when 17 firms banded together into 3 teams, each organized like a typical design and construction team, and “adopted” about 90 students from local high schools.
Volunteers from each of the firms, serving as mentors, worked directly with the students to introduce them to the broad range of people and projects within the construction industry.
After proving success in NYC, ACE expanded to New Jersey in 1998 and Connecticut the following year. By the turn of the century, ACE had 7 affiliates in 6 states, serving nearly 1,000 students each year.
The program connects high school students with mentors from the industry to inspire them to pursue careers in design and construction. Through after-school group mentoring and a robust college scholarship program, ACE is building the next generation of architects, project managers, contractors and engineers.
The ACE Mentor Program of America is the construction industry's fastest-growing high school mentoring program, reaching over 14,000 students annually with a network of over 5,000 volunteer mentors.
ACE Mentor Program Houston
In January of 2009, formal paperwork was filed to establish the Houston affiliate of the ACE Mentor Program with Carrie Arnold-Gutierrez from Bechtel leading the way. She moved to Texas from Baltimore, where she first got involved with ACE, and knew the organization needed an affiliate in Houston.
Due to Hurricane Ike striking Houston in September of 2008, plans to launch the affiliate were delayed, making 2009-2010 our first full program year after a soft launch in Spring 2009 with a small, but mighty group of 32 students and 11 mentors.
Today, ACE Houston hosts eight mentoring locations across the city, including a thriving virtual platform, where our team of over 150 volunteer mentors meet with over 350 students on a weekly basis to talk about careers in design and construction.
Our Mission
The mission of ACE is to engage, excite, and enlighten high school students to pursue careers in
Architecture
Construction, &
Engineering
through mentoring and continued support for their advancement into the industry.