Community
Priya Shah
Senior Manager, Community EngagementAlliance of Clinical Research Professionals
Priya built a mentoring community out of a problem nobody had framed as an association issue: new coordinators were quitting the profession within eighteen months, alone.
Raleigh, North Carolina
Why we love this
Why We Love What Priya Is Doing
Clinical research coordinators leave the field at a rate that alarms everyone who studies it. The usual explanations are pay, workload and the sheer administrative weight of the job.
When Priya Shah looked at the Alliance’s own membership data, she found something the industry literature had not prepared her for. The members most likely to lapse were not the overworked ones. They were the ones who, when asked, could not name a single other person in their field they would text with a question.
She did not build a mentoring program because mentoring is a popular member benefit. She built one because isolation was showing up in the lapse data, and she was the only person in the building who noticed.
The Challenge
The Alliance had tried mentoring twice before. Both attempts followed the standard shape: an application form, a matching spreadsheet, an introductory email, and a hopeful silence.
Priya pulled the records. Of the 148 pairs formed in the second attempt, fewer than thirty had exchanged more than three messages. "We had been matching people and then leaving them to invent a relationship from scratch over email," she says. "That is a lot to ask of two strangers who are both already exhausted."
“Everyone said they wanted a mentor. Almost nobody knew what to say in the first message. That gap was the whole problem.”
Listening to Members
Priya interviewed twenty-two members: eleven who had abandoned a mentoring match, and eleven experienced coordinators who had volunteered as mentors and heard nothing back.
The mentees were afraid of wasting a senior person’s time. The mentors, almost universally, had been waiting to be asked and had assumed the silence meant they were not wanted. Two groups of people, each politely protecting the other from a conversation both wanted to have.
What They Changed
The third attempt removed the blank page entirely. Matches are made in small circles rather than pairs — one experienced member with three or four newer ones — which takes the pressure off any single relationship and means a quiet month does not kill the whole thing.
The mechanics that made it work
- Circles of four or five, not pairs. If one person goes quiet, the circle survives.
- A six-month commitment with a defined end, so saying yes does not feel like signing up forever.
- A first meeting Priya’s team schedules and attends for the first ten minutes, then leaves.
- One prompt sent monthly — a real question from the community, not an icebreaker.
- An explicit permission slip: mentees are told, in writing, that answering questions is the thing mentors signed up for.
That last item is Priya’s favourite. The welcome message to every new mentee contains a sentence she wrote and rewrote a dozen times: "You are not interrupting. This is the part they volunteered for."
- Members in a mentoring circle
- 912
- Circles still meeting at six months
- 86%
- Highest-rated member benefit
- 2nd
- Monthly staff time to host first meetings
- 4 hrs
What Happened Next
In its first full year the program went from 148 largely dormant pairs to 912 members meeting in circles, with 86% still active at the six-month mark. It is now the second highest-rated benefit in the Alliance’s member survey, behind only the certification program.
The number Priya cares about is different. Members who complete a circle renew at 94%, against 81% for comparable members who do not.
“Retention was never the goal. It is just what happens when someone has a reason to stay.”
Eleven of the mentors in this year’s cohort were mentees in the first. Priya sends each of them a note when they sign up, which she admits is not a scalable practice and which she has no intention of stopping.
What Other Associations Can Learn
- Match into small groups instead of pairs. Circles are far more forgiving of a busy month.
- Never hand two members a blank page. Host the first meeting, even briefly.
- Give the relationship an end date. A six-month commitment gets said yes to; an open-ended one gets deferred.
- Tell newer members explicitly that they are not imposing. Most silence is politeness, not disinterest.
- Look at your lapse data for loneliness. It is often there, and it is rarely labelled.
Sometimes the most valuable thing an association can provide is another person who understands.
The Member Impact
What changed for members
Newer clinical research professionals now have a named group of peers they can ask a question at 9pm on a Tuesday — and the members who have one are markedly more likely to stay in the field and in the Alliance.
- Members in an active mentoring circle
- 912
- Circles still meeting at six months
- 86%
- Renewal rate, circle members vs comparable members
- 94% vs 81%
Beyond the numbers
- Mentoring is now the second highest-rated benefit in the annual member survey.
- Eleven first-year mentees have returned as mentors.
- First meetings are hosted by staff, removing the awkward opening entirely.
- Circles have produced three regional in-person meetups organized entirely by members.
“I was six months from leaving research altogether. What kept me was four people who understood exactly what my Tuesday was like.”
In their words
Hear It From Priya
Priya Shah on building a mentoring community that actually meets
6 min
Priya explains why pairs fail, why circles hold, and the single sentence in the welcome email that she rewrote a dozen times.
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