By Edwina Duenas, Communications Associate
More than 300 Bay Area women have volunteered as TechWomen mentors since the program’s inception in 2011.
Mentor matches for TechWomen 2015 are nearly finalized as we approach the six-week mark from arrival day for Emerging Leaders (ELs).
Cultural Mentors
This week, we hosted orientations for Cultural Mentors at the IIE San Francisco office and Flipboard headquarters in Palo Alto. Based on feedback from program alumnae, the 2015 program for Cultural Mentors will be organized differently. Groups of mentors will facilitate events, instead of having one-on-one mentor pairings for each EL. The 53 Cultural Mentors are divided among four specific areas: outdoors, arts and culture, culinary excursions, and networking. We devised this system to allow for a deeper sense of community to develop, while also allowing Cultural Mentors to collaborate and enable ELs to enjoy cultural activities based on shared interests.
With ELs hosted at companies in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Cultural Mentors are split between the two locations. This allows for the mentors to develop a lively calendar of events in each of their respective areas.
Professional Mentors
Professional mentorship matching is in progress, with nearly all 99 ELs matched. Placement notifications for ELs have begun, and the team is hard at work to secure mentorship placements for the remaining ELs. Like previous years, we have a broad range of professional expertise, interests and goals represented in the cohort. We’re excited to have new host companies join the program this year, including: Lyft, Madison Reed, Zenefits, 500 Startups and more. We’re also pleased to continue our partnerships with companies like Twitter, Symantec, Juniper Networks, SolarCity and LinkedIn for 2015 mentorship placements. ELs will be hosted at more than 30 innovative companies across the Bay Area this year.
Stay tuned for updates about this year’s group of mentors. Subscribe to our blog to receive updates in your inbox.
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