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Mentors are key to the academic success of engineering graduate students, and particularly historicallymarginalized graduate students. To continue to enhance and improve mentoring experiences in order to support minoritized students to persist in their doctoral degrees, it is important to understand who is mentoring minoritized students regarding enrollment in doctoral programs and what expectations these students have for mentoring in graduate school. We used interviews and focus groups to explore who students cite as mentors and who they expect to fill this role once entering the doctoral pursuit. We used a theoretical framework organized around different support and challenge roles that dissertation advisors might play to understand the different roles these mentors played. We found various roles in which a variety of mentors influence minoritized students enrolling in doctoral programs, including family, informal undergraduate mentors, and peers, as those who support their decision to enroll. Our findings also detail the expectations of rising minoritized students for future advisors.