Earlier this summer, the Women in Big Data (WiBD) Board of Directors formed a workgroup to prepare a recommendation for a globally available mentoring initiative.

The WiBD vision statement guided the workgroup’s effort:  Fulfilling our vision to cultivate tangible opportunities for women, unlock latent potential through accessible training, act as a catalyst for advancement, and empower equity allies of any gender with inclusive mentorship programming.

The Global Mentoring Initiative will bring value to all WiBD members  by cultivating professional, interpersonal, and business skill growth; bring value to the WiBD organization by contributing to the achievement of the organization goals determined by the Board of Directors; and bring value to our participating community groups by partnering with them in achieving goals of common interest.

The keystone objectives are to:

• Protect privacy and ensure security of all participants
• Match mentees to mentors who possess knowledge and experience that can guide the mentee
• Provide networking opportunities for mentees and mentors
• Monitor current and longitudinal progress of mentees
• Create a vehicle for effective career skill development that is flexible enough to meet various mentoring needs while providing a centralized process to support program execution, monitoring and tracking

The workgroup settled on a two-tier organizational design for the Global Mentoring Initiative based on the input received from stakeholders in each region.  These tiers are the Mentoring Management Tier and Mentoring Program Tier and are envisioned to support each other through concerted effort.  Here’s is a brief description of each:

Mentoring Management Tier

• Consists of the Mentoring Director, who manages the centralized tools supporting the individual program efforts, and the Mentoring Board Level Advisor, who provides guidance to the Mentoring Director
• Assists Mentoring Program Owners (see below) with program design and configuration, as well as execution questions, problems and obstacles

Mentoring Program Tier:

• Consists of Mentoring Program Owners, who design and launch a mentoring program using the tools provided by the centralized mentoring platform, and have direct contact with the mentors and mentees enrolled in their program.

If approved by the board, the workgroup estimates that mentoring programs can launch by 2nd quarter 2022.  We’ll keep everyone posted with what to look forward to.

The workgroup consists of the following people who strongly believe in the positive contribution of mentoring:  Anjani Phuyal, Astha Sharma, Deborah Sgro (Lead), Erika Lunceford, Marina Alekseeva, and Tina Tang.