Interesting scenario. Sounds quite a bit like the role of this one person in grad school who gives you the boost you need. Usually not your director, who’s more of a name than a resource. Possibly someone with a relatively low status. It becomes something of an “informal advisor” role. “Trust” is indeed key, here. My first reaction reading this was to balk at the “trust” part, because critical thinking skills warrant other methods to gather resources. But this is a situation where trust does matter quite a bit. Not that the resources are necessarily better. But there’s much less overhead involved if rapport has been established. In fact, it’s often easy to get through a text or to start a conversation with someone using knowledge of the angle through which they’ve been recommended. “If she told me to talk to so-and-so, chances are that this person won’t take it the wrong way if we start discussing this issue.”