The mentor's role requires us to explore our professional and our personal identities. We are humans first and teachers second – but we often forget that. Most mentors will be supporting teachers from a diverse range of backgrounds and lived experiences so mentors need to appreciate the importance of this fact and be able to support the complexities of intersectional identities. As teacher trainers, we need to consider how we can empower early career teachers to be their authentic selves and how we can create psychological safety for courageous conversations. This session will offer some practical advice to achieve this as well as looking at how we need to start by reflecting on our own power and privilege, how we must do the inner work before we can start the outer work, how we can be inclusive allies and how we can stand in solidarity and speak out on issues affecting our mentees.