Mentoring has become an important tool in education. Types of mentoring in education include: (1) peer mentoring among middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students; (2) cooperating teachers mentoring student teachers; (3) expert mentoring of novice or early-career teachers; (4) career mentoring of doctoral students by faculty; and (5) mentoring of tenure-track faculty by senior faculty. These various forms or stages of mentoring provide an educative-translative bridge between the hard knowledge and explicit skills associated with formal curricula/policy and the soft knowledge and implicit skills developed in spaces that lie outside of formal curricula/policy. Put more simply, effective mentoring allows an individual to connect common knowledge to common sense and people of common interest. While built into formal mentoring systems, this connectivity also is the stuff of informal mentoring -- hallway conversations before or after class, drop-in meetings during office hours, or other exchanges of a more spontaneous, serendipitous, or authentic nature. The author examines the potential value of informal mentoring situated within higher education academic contexts or workplace environments.