  As data mining research and applications continue to expand in to a variety
of fields such as medicine, finance, security, etc., the need for talented and
diverse individuals is clearly felt. This is particularly the case as Big Data
initiatives have taken off in the federal, private and academic sectors,
providing a wealth of opportunities, nationally and internationally. The
Broadening Participation in Data Mining (BPDM) workshop was created more than 7
years ago with the goal of fostering mentorship, guidance, and connections for
minority and underrepresented groups in the data science and machine learning
community, while also enriching technical aptitude and exposure for a group of
talented students. To date it has impacted the lives of more than 330
underrepresented trainees in data science. We provide a venue to connect
talented students with innovative researchers in industry, academia,
professional societies, and government. Our mission is to facilitate
meaningful, lasting relationships between BPDM participants to ultimately
increase diversity in data mining. This most recent workshop took place at
Howard University in Washington, DC in February 2019. Here we report on the
mentoring strategies that we undertook at the 2019 BPDM and how those were
received.
