The initial pool of mentors was finalized five days ago. I was holding out hope that a few more of our long-term members would get back to me, but alas, they have not. The initial Mentor informational thread was finalized that same day and has been waiting for Cabinet input since then. Since no Cabinet was given in these last few days, I can only assume it is perfect and ready for public release, which has been done here.
We have our initial pool of 12 mentors lined up and ready to go. I would encourage the public, particularly the mentors, to provide comments on the mentor thread, which can be found here.
The initial work was done solely behind the scenes because I needed to backchannel with some long-term and experienced members of the region to see if there was even interest in the project.
Now that I have established that there is interest, built the initial pool of mentors, and created the initial thread (found here), I will be able to get much more public involvement (and mentor feedback), including the recruitment of new mentors and application of new mentees that might want to join the program (but were on the forums prior to official launch).
Well, I am not looking to get roasted alive for having a bad product up front! 
In all seriousness, secrecy was certainly not the intent, but I find directly asking people one-on-one to be more effective than asking everyone generically. 
I hope my answers answered your questions, and I look forward to your participation in the mentor thread!