Showing Up When It Matters

January is Mentorship Month, a time to recognize the impact alumni mentors have across the community. Mentors such as Peter Chung, BComm’78.

Chung has spent much of his career in rooms where people are figuring things out. Sometimes those rooms are boardrooms. Sometimes they are classrooms, community spaces or one-on-one conversations with someone new to Canada who is unsure how their experience fits into an unfamiliar system. 

Across those settings, Chung’s approach to mentorship has remained consistent. 

Today, Chung is a principal, business consultant and strategic planning coach with his company, Synergy BQi / Gemini HR Consulting, working with organizations and leaders across all sectors. Over more than 20 years, Chung has mentored students, professionals, University of Calgary alumni and newcomers to Canada, often during periods of uncertainty. What he sees most often is not a lack of talent, but a lack of clarity.

“People don’t always need to be told what to do,” he says. “They need someone who will listen, help them evaluate, and remind them they’re not alone in figuring things out.”

A graduate of UCalgary’s Faculty of Business (now the Haskayne School of Business) in the late 1970s, Chung understands the pressures that shape early careers. Looking back, he sees how much emphasis is placed on academic and technical achievement, often at the expense of personal growth and development.

“In school, in everything that we have done, we have never really talked about how we deal with mental health,” he says. “We never talked about how we treat ourselves, how we sell ourselves, or how we recover when things start to deteriorate. So much is focused on technical skills.”

That gap, Chung believes, is where mentorship becomes essential.

“University prepares you academically,” Chung says. “But life after graduation demands confidence, communication and self-awareness. Those things don’t come from textbooks. They come from conversation.”

Mentorship, for Chung, is deeply tied to giving back. He began mentoring early in his career through organizations like Junior Achievement, facilitating classes and supporting students. Over time, that commitment expanded as his career grew across high-tech, health care, oil and gas, and post-secondary education in Canada and internationally.

“Mentorship, to me, really boils down to giving back,” he says. “Ever since I started working, I wanted to mentor students and young people.”

As an immigrant himself, Chung felt a strong responsibility to support newcomers to Canada. Many arrived with extensive professional backgrounds, but struggled to have their experience recognized.

“Some of them have a lot of experience in engineering, medicine, law,” he says. “The challenge is that their experience is not always recognized in Canadian society, even though the practices are similar. That creates frustration and self-doubt.”

Before offering guidance, Chung says he has to listen and learn first.

“In order to mentor someone, I have to learn from them,” he says. “I need to learn their culture, how they do things, and what background they have. Mentorship is not a one-way (street).”

Across decades of mentoring, Chung estimates he has supported nearly 100 people, but his impact has been exponential, with many of them going on to find success as mentors themselves. 

“Some of them come back years later and say, ‘Do you remember me?’” he says. “Those moments mean a lot, because you realize the impact stayed with them.”

Chung is careful to distinguish mentorship from control.

“Mentorship is not a dictatorship,” he says. “You cannot say, ‘This was my path, so this must be your path.’”

Instead, Chung blends mentorship and coaching. Early on, he may offer advice to help someone build confidence. Over time, he steps back, encouraging people to chart their own course.

“I can write the strategy for them. I can write the business plan,” he says. “But those would be my answers, not theirs. My role is to help them create their own future.”

That balance is especially important now. Chung believes mentorship plays a critical role in addressing burnout, mental health and workplace challenges.

“In all the disciplines we’ve gone through, everything is focused on what you deliver to organizations,” he says. “There’s never anything that talks about you as a person. What you’re made of. What happens when you’re faced with difficulty, and how you deal with that.”

Mentorship, Chung says, creates space for reflection and care in ways formal systems often cannot.

For Chung, Mentorship Month is a reminder that such guidance is not reserved for a select group of people. 

“Anyone can mentor; you just have to be willing to show up,” he says. “Sometimes, they (the mentees) have crazy ideas; sometimes, it’s pain they’re carrying. The idea is you have someone you can talk to, someone who gives you guidance.”

Now 72, Chung has no plans to slow down.

“I won’t stop,” he says. “I’ll keep going. I want to share what I know for as long as I can.”

As alumni reflect on their own journeys, Chung hopes they think about the moments when someone listened, offered guidance or helped them regain confidence.

“You never know how much a conversation might mean to someone,” he says.

Sometimes, mentorship is not about changing someone’s life in a dramatic way.

Sometimes, it is simply about simply being present when it matters most.