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Purpose: This chapter aims to critically explore the nature of mentoring initiatives through the conceptual lenses of social capital and communities of practice offering a distinctive understanding of talent management (TM) innovations in the international hospitality industry.

Methodology/approach: It achieves its aim through identifying and analysing current mentoring initiatives operating in the international hospitality sector, and scrutinises how they provide a sector level approach to TM challenges.

Findings: Industry level mentoring initiatives emerge as TM innovations connecting employees within networks across the international hospitality sectors. Mentoring creates bonds and bridges between senior and junior employees beyond their own workplaces, connecting them to the industry and supporting TM by enhancing the identification of opportunities and the recognition of talent. These initiatives also act as learning communities where contemporary TM dilemmas can be explored by participants from diverse backgrounds and between generations.

Research limitations/implications: The findings rely on the identification and exploration of publically available data, and therefore future primary data collection would yield richer insights into the experiences of stakeholders of these mentoring initiatives as TM innovations.

Social implications: Mentoring initiatives can exemplify innovative ways of supporting TM and addressing diversity and inequality issues in fragmented and dispersed sectors, such as the international hospitality industry.

Originality/value of paper: The exploration of contemporary mentoring initiatives in the international hospitality industry identifies the value of cross-industry TM innovations stretching beyond stakeholders, such as educators, employers and policy-makers. It identifies mentoring initiatives as mechanisms for creating bonds and bridges between those industry aspirants at various career stages where diversity and inclusion may be a challenge in a fragmented and dispersed sector.

In this study, the authors investigated the academic and social experiences of first-generation undergraduate Latinx students who participated in a Latinx student-focused organization at a large, research-intensive, Predominately White Institution (PWI) in the Midwest. Our results revealed three major themes. First, participants considered the Latinx student organization to be a significant resource for their social integration into the university; however, it was less significant as an academic resource. Second, the participants recognized that while the university “tries” to promote diversity, they felt that the university could do more in promoting ethnic student groups and their interests across campus. Third, participants perceived that the university treats all Latinx students as one homogenous group, ignoring the diversity that exists between different Latinx groups. These themes suggest that efforts to make PWIs more diverse and inclusive may benefit from the formation and maintenance of minoritized ethnic student organizations. PWIs would also benefit by incorporating the diverse Latinx student perspectives into institutional diversity policy, and prioritizing higher-quality initiatives for greater visibility of Latinx student issues across campus. Moreover, programming that does not aggregate or homogenize Latinx identity, but embraces and values the multifaceted Latinx identities, would also benefit PWIs.