Adult mentors who possess the cultural capital and personal portfolios needed to provide digital role models for urban youth are an essential and unifying element of the DYN model. Cultural capital means that mentors must be able to understand the experiences of urban youth as consumers of popular culture and leverage those experiences to help students become more discerning consumers of new media. Personal portfolios enable mentors to give students examples of their personal new media literacies and leverage those examples to help students become fluent producers of new media. DYN hires accomplished new media artists to serve as mentors and provides professional development to equip them with the pedagogical knowledge and any additional technical fluency they need to teach New Media Arts courses and facilitate afterschool pods. Experience has proven that mentors with strong cultural capital, personal portfolios, pedagogical knowledge, and technical fluency are most successful in developing new media literacies and strengthening student identities.