The European Commission for Economy, Employment and Social Affairs launched an initiative that brings forth to girls and young women role models that broke through the traditional career paths to lead their own companies. No less than 130 business women from 10 EU Member States have been appointed as Ambassadors of female entrepreneurship.

Throughout the year, they will be speaking directly to their counterparts in schools, universities, community groups, nurturing their self-confidence and giving concrete entrepreneurial knowledge, and also use media channels to dispel stereotypes about women in business. They have proven outstanding leadership in sectors such as technology, pharmacy, management consultancy and coaching or even wood industry. Some of them, such as Runhild Gammelsæter, the owner of a Norwegian biotechnology company, have taken further steps ahead, transforming their scientific research into a successful business.

In an environment where women's enterprises are concentrated in retailing, catering or community services, exchanging practices are meant to bring a shift in attitudes and allow women to be better represented in the knowledge economy. This action is part of those foreseen in the Commission's 2008 ∧ top

Jehanne Savi has built a career in the telecommunications industry, where she now heads the IT Delivery division for France within the Group IT executive committee for France Telecom Group. She holds a degree in telecommunications management and a PhD. She is one of the first WiL members who supported the concept of a mentoring program for young women and has agreed to share her views on the benefits it brings to organizations and what societal issues can be worked out through mentoring.

From a business perspective, Jehanne considers that an organization whose leaders support diversity frameworks can derive considerable economic benefits. In the short term, programs such as mentoring allow business leaders to assess the skills held by young people as well as to guide them on the path to becoming competitive junior-level management. In the long run, such initiatives attract, through a snowball effect, performance-driven talent and foster reliable customer-oriented operation. Ultimately, it contributes to the company’s cooperation and collective intelligence.

As the latest She Figures of the EU Commission show, there is a need for skilled people in technical fields. One solution is to attract more young women to follow technical studies. “Without doubt, such actions need to start early in the education of young girls, but we are also responsible to showing to young people in general what a technical career really means. Once you enter a company, you will dedicate your time to various issues, on the marketing, economic or even the legal side” says Jehanne. Showing all the sides of a technical career, through a mentor - mentee relationship, increases the chances of reversing the current trend in downsized skills.

“From a personal view, my mentor has strongly influenced me to reach the level of self-confidence I needed for developing my career” explains Jehanne. As a recently released study of the Research Institute LH2 and Equilibres network shows, 55% of women in management positions in France are not optimistic about their career evolution mostly because of the chances they are offered. Mentoring programs are meant to dispel such attitudes and to raise motivation and performance levels. They should therefore lead to a higher number of self-confident women in top positions who have understood early in their career how to develop professionally in diverse roles, companies and sectors, by leveraging their technical background.

WiL has provided its members with a strong added value at European level, by enabling discussions with EU Commissioners or members of the EU parliament. In 2009, we are launching the Mentoring program, which reflects the overall positioning of the WiL network since it is: Open (both specific and diversified target groups of mentees), Transversal (mentors with different and complementary backgrounds) and Focused on enabling young women to step up in leadership in the information society.

In 2009, the mentoring program is launched experimentally, with the objective to form 10 pairs of mentors/mentees, within 2 distinct groups, one with mentees who are students, the other one with mentees who have entrepreneurial projects. Mentors include senior executive women, both from the public and the private sector who all share the will to enable young women to move forward. On June 3rd, mentees will be able to meet their mentors.

Claudine, as project coordinator, is developing, assessing and adjusting the processes based on regular contacts with mentors and mentees. So far. this has involved supplying both mentors and mentees with information such as guidelines, sketching out of the type of agreement that can be developed between both. It will later on involve monitoring progresses and gathering feedback from participants to determine how to move from an experimental pilot program to a fully fledged program as of 2010.

During the working sessions on December 11th, I felt very happy to having received this very nice Christmas present from my network (JADE). The passionate manner in which Ms Samman and Ms Bonfiglioli conducted the event and the wise contributions of the participants made me feel that this is going to be a unique experience for everybody. I began reflecting on how to make also other JADE members benefit from it and while leaving the event I already had an idea in my mind, which I will shortly present as follows.

The JADE representatives in this mentoring program in cooperation with leaders and mentors, as well as with JADE Executive Board organize a workshop series about the New Working Environments where gender diversity has brought to successful developments.

Participants of this workshop would be young men and women of our JADE network who should have the possibility to learn about the impact that the inclusion of women in the decision making process has had in business, political and academic world.

The rationale for this workshop series would be: Trends in the entrepreneurial and management world show that in the middle and long run we all will be living in a society in which feeling comfortable in working together with women in the course of decision making processes, will be a competitive advantage in the job market. JADE network delivers a good example on how naturally young women have been integrated in the decision making process at local, national and international level. And it is reasonable to predict that many of these young women and young men, who have working with them, will be leaders of tomorrow. They all have now experiences that they can share with colleagues and outsiders. The results of this workshop series can be brought together in a booklet that can be distributed to enterprises, not-for-profit organizations, governments, international institutions with the aim to support their gender diversity programs.

This mentoring program has the chance to help shaping this future and I think this initial proposal on which can be further built upon, would represent an interesting extension for this mentoring program. I would be glad to deal with this topic also in future; therefore I hope that this first proposal will be welcomed.

I would like to conclude this feedback letter with special thanks to the initiators of this mentoring program, to the mentors and the mentees.

Looking forward to meeting you soon,

Lindita Komani

JADE (Know&How JE Graz, President)