September 7, 2020
“Learn and practice networking with people in power, identify sponsors in your company and surroundings, […] challenge your thoughts with your sponsors, and engage beyond your plate. Allow a sponsor to become a mentor over a while!”
Who are you? What do we need to know about you?
I’m an international IT Executive with long-term experience from different industries, acting as transformational Interim CIO/CDO in global organizations, optimizing value contribution by means of IT and Digitalization of business models. I designed, optimized, and transformed IT organizations on company and corporate level, delivered several M&A and carve-out projects, as well as global outsourcing and offshoring projects. I started my career as a consultant and moved quickly to operational as well as strategic functions, from board-level in KMU to top-tier leadership roles in DAX group, acted across 12 countries, and I am now looking back to more than 20 years of professional experience. I’m backed with a university degree in Information Science, later enriched by an executive MBA, recently updated by Digital executive skills
Why did you join our program? What makes it special?
The program offered the opportunity to get in touch with women aiming to climb up the career ladder from outside my own company environment. The program suits perfectly my personal focus area, as it finds its dedication in the field of IT and allows a hanseatic regional focus.
Did you have any experience with mentoring programs in your career until now?
Indeed, I do have experience with mentoring and mentoring programs of different shapes. I was part of company-internal programs intending to develop high-potentials as well as other independent mentoring programs for women. Along my whole career shaping opportunities for women in IT was and is an essential part. Several of those relationships last already over years.
What do you love most about being a mentor?
Mentoring gets me strongly connected to a variety of different characters, skills, backgrounds, ambitions, cultures, work ethics, corporate environments, disciplines and so much more. Lots of relationships develop over time to a supportive bidirectional collaborative network that might last long term.
What is needed to have a good mentor-mentee relationship?
Mentoring is a highly intimate and personal relationship that requires unrestricted confidentiality, loyalty, and reliability between both partners. Trustful communication is an essential enabler to make it work. A real interest in each other and complementary experience prepares a conjoint route. Finally, both partners need to click with each other on a personal level as the scope of topics is quickly affecting all anchors of a career: Health, financials, and relationships.
Is there anything you would recommend to women?
There are lots of good practices for women to pave a successful career path towards management or even executive roles. These should be part of an individual mentoring relationship. Let’s focus here on mentoring itself as an important mean to foster a career: Take the chance of the organized and orchestrated mentorship to learn and understand what mentoring could mean for yourself in the long run. Understand how a natural mentor relationship should develop over years and how you should cultivate it: Learn and practice networking with people in power, identify sponsors in your company and surroundings, build strong connections, support your sponsors proactively, challenge your thoughts with your sponsors, and engage beyond your plate. Allow a sponsor to become a mentor over a while! Be aware: It’s always the mentor who choses you – never the other way around.
Interested?
Apply today here. A moinworld member will get in touch with you for the next steps within 1 week.
Do you have any questions? Get in touch with us at mentoring@moinworld.de.
We will also have a Meetup celebrating the ending of our first mentors and mentees batch in September. Everybody is welcome to join and listen to some of the success stories. Just follow our events!
Read more about some of our great mentors here.