U.S. State Department TechWomen Certificate 2012, Katy Dickinson
Mentoring Standard offers uniquely successful guidance and tools to create a new mentoring program or improve such a program that already exists. Founder Katy Dickinson is an award-winning Process Architect of large scale, lasting mentoring programs for corporations, governments, and non-profit organizations, including:
- Sun Microsystems Engineering – global corporate professional Engineering and executive mentoring program, in 30 countries: 2001-2010.
- TechWomen – US State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs mentoring program, for STEM leaders in the Silicon Valley and 23 countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia: started in 2010.
- InovAtiva Brasil – Brazil’s Secretariat for Innovation, Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade professional and entrepreneurial mentoring program: started in 2013.
- Education for Ministry (EfM) at Elmwood Jail: partnered with the Correctional Institutions Chaplaincy, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real, and the University of the South – School of Theology to bring the EfM mentoring and theological education program into the Santa Clara County jail system: started in 2015.
Katy Dickinson in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan with TechWomen Delegation 2017.
The Situation
Corporations, governments, and organizations want to get the highest value from their mentoring programs. They want a program structure that gives the highest Return on Investment (ROI). Mentoring programs are established for good reasons but often fail. Programs often do not continue long-term or to provide lasting value or benefit to the mentors, mentees, and the host organization. A poor mentoring program may actually do more damage than not having a program at all.
The highest ROI on mentoring programs comes from using measurably-effective best practices. Sun Microsystems’ corporate Engineering mentoring program was measured at 1,000% ROI by an external analytics firm (Gartner 2006). Very successful programs like this tend to continue, expand, and get even better over time because they provide visible, measurable, repeatable value (Sun 2009).
Unfortunately, there is no standard for mentoring best practices. For many organizations, there is often nothing against which to measure individual or program development. Information about mentoring program success is almost always privately held by the host organization – so there is very little solid data others can compare to or learn from. The great majority of publications about mentoring are enthusiastic but vague as to metrics or methods.
InovAtiva Brasil Mentoring Program Development (in Sao Paulo, Brazil) 2014
The Solution
With decades of experience with top global companies, Mentoring Standard will work with your team to create a thriving program, reach new echelons, or guide a struggling program to meet its potential. We can help your organization improve your mentoring program so that it is measurably successful. Areas of work include:
- Program Design, Process Development, and Documentation
- Mentor and Mentee Recruitment, Onboarding
- Mentor-Mentee Matching (our matching tool uses the Gale—Shapley algorithm)
- Training Development and Delivery
- Evaluation, Metrics, Optimization
Contact us and we’ll get the conversation started about assessing where you are and where you could go.