With 2.4 million STEM jobs unfilled in the United States, it is more important than every to encourage students to persist in STEM majors. However, persistence in STEM is a challenge for all students with over half the students leaving the majors. Mentorship has the potential to address the shortage in STEM of students from diverse backgrounds. Amy Salter is an Educational Psychology scholar at Georgia State University committed to advancing the public's understanding of how we learn and persist in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Honored as an Atlanta Urban Teacher Resident (AUTR), Amy also has prior related experience as a high school science teacher in Atlanta, GA where she experienced the snowball effects of mentorship. Her undergraduate STEM career at Howard University in Washington, D.C. exposed her to positive mentors and solidified her commitment to serving underrepresented communities. Accordingly, her current research as a fourth-year Ph.D. student focuses on the interactions between mentorship, identity, learning, and persistence in STEM. Amy hopes to use her research and platform to promote mentoring initiatives and broadly increase diversity in STEM. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx