Case study · Product management
The Big/Little Project
Designing a trusted mentorship network that connects Portland Public Schools students with mentors, peers, and local opportunities.
My sister Isabella founded The Big/Little Project and runs it day to day. As Product Manager and Senior Advisor, I help translate student needs into product scope, platform choices, and a program model designed to grow responsibly.
- Role
- Product Manager & Senior Advisor
- Founder
- Isabella Llados, my sister
- Timeline
- July 2026 – present
- Serving
- Portland Public Schools students
Context and problem
Guidance in high school tends to reach the students who already know somebody: an older sibling, a family friend, a neighbor who went through the same application a year ago. Everyone else works it out alone.
That gap has widened in Portland. Portland Public Schools has reduced its budget for four consecutive years, and counselors and other student support positions have been among the reductions (KGW8, May 2024). There are fewer adults available for the conversation a student needs, while the questions about classes, applications, majors, and first jobs stay the same.
Big/Little connects those students with mentors who have recently been through it. It’s built to sit alongside school counseling rather than substitute for it, and it isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by the district.
Users
Students
Portland Public Schools, grades 9 to 12
Students working through classes, applications, majors, scholarships, and first jobs. The sign-up is built for someone who knows they want help before they can name exactly what kind.
Mentors
College students, recent grads, young professionals
People close enough to the stage to remember it clearly. Many are PPS alumni, though the program doesn’t require it. They’re volunteers, which makes their time the scarcest resource in the system.
My role
The work happens before the building does: who a feature is for, what it replaces, how it fits with everything already there, and whether the program behind it can support it yet.
As a current PPS senior, Isabella has the closest view of the problem. My part is giving that view product structure, pressure-testing ideas against scope, and keeping the platform and the program model pointed at the same outcome.
Product approach
The scope is deliberately narrow: Portland Public Schools students, and mentors a few years ahead of them. A network that specific is legible to a student in a way a national directory isn’t, and it sets the standard the platform has to meet, because an introduction between two strangers only works if both sides trust the thing that made it.
Two firsthand perspectives shaped how we read what students needed, and neither is formal user research. I worked in my high school’s college and career center as a marketing intern, which is where you see which support programs exist and who they actually reach. Isabella is inside it right now, watching her class work through applications. One view is of the system; the other is from inside it.
The platform today
Connections
Mentor directory
Profiles listing each mentor’s college, the PPS school they came from, and the topics they’ll help with, from college applications and scholarships to athletics recruiting and choosing a major.
Community
Moderated question board
Student questions sorted into college applications, scholarships, choosing a major, career advice, high school life, and general questions. Posts and replies are reviewed before they appear.
Discover Portland
Opportunity guide
A curated catalogue of Portland organizations across paid work, volunteering, and student programs, each with what it is, who it’s open to, and when applications typically open.
Events
In person
A student panel on the senior year experience is scheduled for fall break. Coffee chats, study sessions, networking nights, and tutoring are defined as recurring formats.
The program model
Around the platform sits the program itself. Mentors apply and describe what they can help with, how much time they have, and how many students they want. Applications are reviewed individually. Approved mentors write the profile students see and consent to it appearing publicly. Students sign up with what they’re hoping to work through, and the match and the introduction are handled directly rather than automatically.
Early traction and next steps
As of August 2026, the Connections directory lists more than 20 published mentor profiles, spanning several PPS high schools and colleges around the country, and Discover Portland catalogues more than 65 Portland organizations and programs. The first student panel is scheduled for fall break, and the community board is live with example threads standing in for student posts so far.
The aspiration is for Big/Little to become the primary mentorship platform serving PPS students. That’s a goal rather than a description of where it is today. The near-term work is more mentors across more schools, the recurring event formats onto a calendar, and the board carrying real student questions.
What to measure is still open. The honest version isn’t how many mentors sign up; it’s whether a student who asks for help ends up in a conversation.
What I learned
A two-sided product is governed by the side that’s harder to supply. Almost everything that determines whether a student has a good experience happens before the introduction: whether the right mentor is in the directory at all, whether their profile says something a student can act on, whether anyone has the time. Most of the product attention goes to the side you aren’t building for.