Credit: Hertz Foundation
Summarizing Interim Report¶
In April of 2025, prior to the workshop, Organizational Mycology conducted an interim report focused on the impact of the Hertz Summer Workshop up until that point to lead to the event in July 2025. We found that the event had provided a collaborative and engaging collegial environment where fellows gained exposure to new career pathways, fostered interdisciplinary collaborations, and engaged in meaningful mentorship opportunities. The interim report synthesized insights from the past three years of workshops, highlighting their impact on attendees’ professional trajectories, research collaborations, and community engagement.
Key findings included:
Career Exploration and Trajectory Shaping
The workshop exposes attendees to career paths they may not have previously considered, sparking career shifts, new research directions, and entrepreneurial ventures.
Fellows report that insights gained from industry, academia, and startups have influenced their professional decisions.
The event facilitates cross-generational engagement, enabling fellows to track career progression and learn from the experiences of those ahead of them.
Attendees expressed interest in more structured discussions on alternative career paths and funding challenges, particularly in response to shifts in federal research support.
Collaboration and Research Partnerships
The Summer Workshop functions as a “collider space”, where interdisciplinary interactions lead to unexpected yet valuable collaborations.
Many fellows report that workshop connections have resulted in research partnerships, consulting roles, and private-sector engagements.
The unstructured social time provided at the event is a crucial factor, offering space for organic, high-impact discussions that would not typically occur in traditional academic or industry settings.
Mentorship and Community Building
The workshop serves as a rare space for cross-cohort mentoring, where senior fellows share insights with those earlier in their careers.
Attendees consistently report that informal mentorship—through casual conversations and networking—tends to be more valuable than structured programs.
The event helps demystify career progression, as fellows witness the long-term trajectories of their peers, providing both inspiration and tangible guidance.
Some attendees suggested intentional efforts to connect newer and senior fellows, such as small-group mentorship discussions or facilitated career dialogues.
These findings underscore the Summer Workshop’s critical role in supporting career development, fostering collaboration, and strengthening the Hertz Community. We noted that as the foundation looks ahead, there are opportunities to expand engagement, address participation barriers, and refine programming to maximize the workshop’s long-term impact. We looked for ways in which 2025 summer workshop organizers seized these opportunities and ways in which they could improve as we carried out the present evaluation.
Objectives & Methods for Evaluation¶
For the evaluation of the 2025 Hertz Summer Workshop, we worked from the understanding that the Hertz Foundation is built upon the strength of its community, comprising current and previously-funded Hertz Fellows[1], donors and key partners, and Hertz staff and volunteers. The Hertz Summer workshop has, to date, provided an annual event through which this community reconnects and expands its network; accordingly, the event is universally viewed by the community as a critical component of growing and sustaining the community and its health. This report provides an evaluation of the 2025 Hertz Summer Workshop, aiming to answer several key questions:
How does attendance at the Hertz Summer Workshop influence outcomes related to:
Attendee connections to one another and their sense of community?
Attendee collaborations?
Attendee professional development (e.g., career paths, focal projects)?
Attendee identification with:
The Hertz Foundation?
Their own disciplinary community?
How does the Summer Workshop advance or hinder the Four Pillars outlined in the Hertz Foundation’s branding framework? (Awesome Responsibility; Prestigious Reputation; Freedom to Innovate; Interdisciplinary Community)
How do these Four Pillars relate to the Four Strategic Pillars outlined in the Hertz Foundation’s strategic plan (Enhance the Hertz Fellowship Model, Create a One-of-a-Kind Community of Fellows, Enhance Diverse Pipelines to Fuel Innovation, Develop Mutually Beneficial Partnerships)?
From the revised branding, a key tagline is “Name a challenge. There’s a Hertz Fellow working on it.” What are some of these challenges?
Where are there commonalities and differences in the types of challenges Hertz Fellows take on?
Where are there opportunities to facilitate conversations around challenges or sets of challenges in cross-disciplinary ways? Is the Summer Workshop adequately facilitating those conversations?
What is the role of staff at the Hertz Summer Workshop in delivering experiences that advance the Hertz Foundation’s goals?
Where are they supported in delivering these experiences, and where could they use additional support?
What are the positive and negative outcomes the staff themselves experience at the workshop?
How do logistical and planning decisions influence workshop outcomes?
What do attendees think of Hertz-branded swag? Is it merchandise that is normative in their community (i.e., will they wear/use it in their daily work and drive attention to the foundation?)
What kind of branded resources, whether physical swag or messaging resources, can we use (or avoid) to best position attendees to be the advocates for the foundation?
How can the general structure of the event and its components be improved?
How was the pilot matching program received?
Did attendees pursue interactions with their recommended network? Why or why not?
What did these connections enable that wouldn’t have been possible without recommendations?
We used a mixed methods approach, including intercepts, surveys, ethnographic observation, and thematic analysis of workshop written and physical materials. We deployed these methods to interrogate the experiences of various Hertz Summer Workshop stakeholders: Hertz Fellows, Hertz staff, Summer Workshop volunteers, and invited guests/donors. Our analysis identified commonalities and differences in how strategic decisions about the workshop influenced positive and negative perceptions and outcomes for these groups.
We centered our analysis on themes identified in existing data from past workshops. Additionally, we consulted with the Hertz Foundation’s Director of Community and Partnership to narrow and expand our focus on particular topic areas. We include a section evaluating the idiosyncrasies of the 2025 workshop–components of the event that differed from years prior–in order to help the Hertz Summer Workshop team assess the generalizability and specificity of the findings.
Note: This report provides raw survey responses from attendees, even if there are misspellings or typos. We refrain from editing responses to preserve the integrity and meaning of the response for the reader, regardless of the authors’ interpretation of the statement.
By Hertz Fellow, we are referring to current and previously funded fellows. Interestingly, the Hertz Foundation and Hertz Community make no distinction between fellows who are currently funded and those who were funded in the past. In this report, we only reference a fellow’s funding period (e.g., 1990s) when it is relevant to the analysis (e.g., when we discuss cross-generational interactions). Likewise, while some may see the Summer Workshop as a gathering or reunion of Hertz alumni, we heard no mention of the word “alumni” during the event and therefore do not refer to this as an alumni event.