Mentoring junior researchers — does it count as evidence, and for what

Spent years formally and informally mentoring more junior colleagues and researchers, and wondered whether this had any evidentiary value, since it doesn't map cleanly onto any single one of the ten criteria the way an award or a publication does. What I concluded, after some research and a conversation with my attorney: mentoring by itself isn't typically a standalone criterion, but it can support a broader narrative about leadership and standing in the field, and specific outcomes from mentoring (a mentee going on to notable work, formal recognition of a mentoring program you built or led) can sometimes feed into a leading-role or original-contributions argument if documented specifically enough. What I didn't do: try to force mentoring into being its own separate piece of standalone evidence when it didn't clearly fit. Instead, I mentioned it briefly in my personal statement as supporting context for my overall standing and leadership in the field, without overstating its evidentiary weight on its own.