OREANDA-NEWS. CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL) announced that it has been officially approved as a mentor to Pathway Partners, LLC, through the U.S. General Services Administration's Mentor Prot?g? Program.

Pathway Partners of Centreville, Va., is a small, veteran-owned business that specializes in management consulting and technical services.

CenturyLink is mentoring Pathway Partners in the areas of business development, sales and marketing, contract management and compliance, engineering and other technical training for a period of three years.

As part of the program, CenturyLink is including Pathway Partners in its account review and planning activities and identifying work that can be performed jointly. The particular categories of work may include security services, program and project management, inventory management and transition support.

"CenturyLink is proud to participate in GSA's Mentor Prot?g? Program and help a small, veteran-owned business like Pathway Partners grow and expand its business," said CenturyLink Senior Vice President and General Manager Tim Meehan, who leads the company's federal government team.

The Mentor-Prot?g? Program, sponsored by GSA's Office of Small Business Utilization, encourages the pairing of GSA prime contractors with smaller companies, including women-owned, veteran-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned, historically underutilized business zone- certified, and socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses. In so doing, GSA promotes the business development of small businesses and enhances their capability to compete more successfully for federal government contracts and gain access to economic opportunities.

By supplying cloud and managed hosting services over its carrier-class network, CenturyLink is able to provide government agencies with the security and reliability they need to carry out their missions.

CenturyLink is ranked No. 37 on Washington Technology's 2015 Top 100 list of federal government IT contractors.