Areas of Expertise

Dr. Hart’s dissertation was titled Life in the Public Eye: A Narrative Investigation of the Impact of Mentor Relationships of Celebrity Figures. Mentoring is an important topic of interest, not only by celebrities and other public figures, but by the population in general. Because there is a dearth in the literature of celebrities and mentoring, Dr. Hart’s research contributed to that body of knowledge.  

Dr. Hart formally and informally interviewed over 100 celebrity figures. Her research included three-step interviews (Seidman, 2013) with 10 celebrities to ascertain biographical narratives (Creswell, 2013), gain insights about their mentoring experiences, and understand their perspectives. Purposeful and convenience sampling (Salmons, 2015) was used to recruit celebrity participants for interviews. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews, phone interviews, email interviews, and document analysis of public records about the celebrity participants’ lives. These sources included published biographies, recorded interviews, newspaper articles, magazine articles, journal articles, and books about the celebrities.   

Seven themes emerged from the participants’ stories. These themes revealed that: a) most celebrity mentoring experiences were constructive and encouraging, b) some celebrity mentoring relationships are adverse, c) informal mentors are essential to celebrity success, d) celebrity family members are valuable mentors, e) teacher mentors are significant to success of celebrities, f) short-term celebrity mentorships are beneficial, and g) mentoring provides a way for celebrities to give back to others.