Mentoring Her: Breaking Barriers of Access To Female Mentors

To elevate girls and women through Mentoring Her. We would continuously improve our mentoring platform with advancement in technology. We plan to scale over a 3 year time frame. Year 1- we have acquired over 1,000 users which validates our model. In Year 2 we will continually seek more partnerships, continued and increased growth with an improved model and Year 3 is to significantly scale and potentially become fee for service/subscription based.  The world would look different as we would have formed more quality mentoring relationships that impact and improve the quality of life of the women

• Improvements in technology 

• Customer acquisition and growth for Mentoring Her 

• Training for Mentoring Her employees 

• Increase educational and growth resources for the community 

• Provide marketing and brand awareness 

• Entrepreneurial Grant opportunities for girls/women 

I am passionate about entrepreneurship, mentorship and girls/women.  This is my life's work and has been for over 2 decades. Leading Mentoring Her is a continuum of my experiences and expertise.  As a tri-sector leader ,  I have successfully managed  my own preventive organization for over seven years and other ventures prior. My ethos is based on early life experiences; that our lives are meant to be lived by helping others. I believe in mentorship and in people that have come before us, as Eleanor Roosevelt is one of my greatest inspirations. According to her, “ Learn from the mistakes of others as we cannot live long enough to make them all on our own”. Mentoring Her offers an online networking platform that goes beyond the traditional face-to-face mentoring by virtually connecting female mentors to mentees thereby, disrupting the barriers of access due to time, geographical location, race and socio-economic status. Representation matters and Mentoring Her provides an enabling environment to facilitate diverse connections and mentorship thereby reducing gender inequalities and disparities and helping to meet SDGs. Our goal for the future is to create the largest virtual community for female mentorship by mentoring 1million girls/women by the year 2030. 

There is a global limitation of female to female mentorship due to significant challenges with access, particularly in areas relating to academia, career, entrepreneurship and economic empowerment. According to Development Dimensions International in 2014, 63% of the businesswomen surveyed never had a mentor, even though 67% ranked  as important to career success. Female mentors are generally more difficult to access due to their compounded schedules with the multiple roles they play as professionals, parents, partners, care givers, etcetera. This makes it more challenging for these females to make themselves available to mentor others. In addition, it has been challenging to connect and sustain the mentor-mentee relationship the various ways we have done and we are currently doing.  

Source: https://www.ddiworld.com/ddi/media/trend-research/womenasmentors_rr_ddi.pdf?ext=.pdf

Mentoring Her is an online social platform that uses technology to virtually connect female mentors and mentees where they can develop relationships and help them grow in areas relating to education, career, entrepreneurship and economic empowerment.

Mentoring Her brings together validated mentoring tools and machine learning to match female mentors to mentees, creating an avenue for any woman seeking mentorship and professional guidance to connect with a mentor, near or far, bypassing what is currently possible.

Mentoring Her offers an online networking platform that goes beyond the traditional face-to-face mentoring by virtually connecting female mentors to mentees. Virtual mentorship is the way to go for now and for the future. It breaks down barriers of access, time, travel, geography, age, race, and socio-economic status. Mentoring Her disrupts the status quo. E-mentoring only equates to 3% of the mentoring channels that are currently being utilized. There is tremendous opportunity to utilize e-mentoring platforms, particularly where there is currently nothing that is being done and also to enhance and support current face to face mentoring programs. Mentoring Her is world-wide, allowing any female  over the age of 13 to join the community, increasing access to a diverse group of women mentors. Our work is unique in our use of technology and algorithms to best match mentors to mentees to create the best relationships and a community . We help to meet SDGs 4, 5 and 10.

Mentoring Her is all about community, communications and connections to help girls and women achieve the best versions of themselves. We all know that to empower women is to empower the world and that's what we are doing at Mentoring Her .

The steps that we have taken are as follows: 

• Created an online platform that uses technology to help curate the best mentoring relationships. 

• Fostered  a community of women that support other women 

• Mentoring Her is an empowering environment that shows representation and helps to reduce inequity and inequalities

• Providing resources and opportunities for girls and women to learn and grow

• We partner for purpose to advance our cause so that we can come together and change the narrative to bridge the mentoring gap that exists and impact more lives and humanity

• Empowering ourselves to empower our community by learning from experts through participation in Google for Startups Accelerator Program