Two talented women started the Over My Shoulder Foundation to foster respect, diversity, culture, and individuality through mentorships.
Two beautiful women, one very young and one older, stand together onstage and sing to one another.
“All I needed to know was right there over my shoulder,” sings the older woman, Grammy-winning singer and artist Patti Austin. “Look at me standing there, I’ve got so much to share.”
In reply, the younger woman, Austin’s teenage mentee, Lianna Gutierrez, replies, “She can show me, show me how to find my dream…this girl has found her voice.”
It’s a song about inspiration, and finding yourself, your voice, and your purpose. It’s also about the critical and invaluable role that mentorship plays in people’s lives.
“I imagined the words of wisdom that Patti was giving this young girl,” says Dawn Carroll, who co-wrote this song, “Over My Shoulder,” and is executive director of the Over My Shoulder Foundation, a media-based nonprofit organization that aims to raise awareness of the impact of mentoring both cross-culturally and cross-generationally. Austin and Carroll, a stone designer with the Everett-based Cumar Marble and Granite, founded the Over My Shoulder Foundation together in an effort to pay forward the benefits of mentoring that they both have experienced in their lives.
“It takes a village. It really does,” says Austin. “All mentoring is is being a part of that village, being on the right side of humanity.”