Kimberly “Kim” Benard has led the Distinguished Fellowships program at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) for 18 years. Previously, Kim helped create and supported the Office of Prestigious Scholarships at Fordham University for three years. Focused on helping students navigate their future careers, Kim established MIT’s Distinguished Fellowships program, which supports students through competitive scholarship applications. Kim personally mentors students (150 annually, primarily underrepresented minorities), working with them to develop career roadmaps and pairing them with faculty or alumni from her mentoring community for skills-based connections. Working primarily with undergraduates and master’s students, she has focused on transforming advising and recruiting methods to reach underrepresented science and engineering students, resulting in hundreds of her students attaining fellowships, including Rhodes, Marshall, and Fulbright awards. Kim’s holistic mentoring efforts have extended across MIT, where she has helped review MIT’s undergraduate withdrawal and readmission practices and reforms to student mentoring, including revisions to advising. Her work reimagining higher education has included collaboration on COVID-19 best practices with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and her focus on nurturing students’ writing has been an ongoing subject with multiple organizations, including the National Association of Fellowships Advisors. Kim earned a B.A. in writing from Loyola University-New Orleans, as well as an M.A. in medieval studies and an M.Phil. in literature from Fordham University. She has received MIT’s highest honors for conspicuous service, a Fulbright Scholarship to Japan, and the Rhodes Trust Inspirational Educator Award.