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Female Mentorship Program: encouraging women’s career advancement

News 4 min read

In 2022 we were proud to launch the first edition of Fagron’s Female Mentorship Program: a 6-month mentoring opportunity for all the women at Fagron that want to explore their ambitions and further develop their careers.

During the duration of the program, mentors and mentees were asked to meet regularly so they could establish their mentoring relationship and have an open space to talk about their challenges, goals, and ambitions.

Most importantly, by introducing the Female Mentorship Program, we can provide a platform for all female leaders. The mentors are able to inspire them to achieve more. Seeing a leader in your organization that you can identify gives you confidence that you too can advance to that level.

But who are we to talk about the program?

We asked both mentors and mentees of the FMP 2022 to share their experiences with us, and here’s what they had to say:

I am sad that the program has ended but happy with everything learned in the personal and professional field. I have learned to organize myself better and see things from another point of view. It has also given me the strength to see that my worries are habitual and to give them less importance to be able to move on. – Marta Martínez (mentee)

I started the program with some insecurity, as I didn’t see myself in a position to be someone’s mentor. But once we got to work, it became clear that mentoring is a partnership where both can learn. It made me much more mature in the sense of understanding that my entire professional career can be an example for someone. And talking to my mentee gave me a lot of tips on how to improve my day-to-day leadership with my own team. – Ana Fidelis (Mentor)

The FMP was the moment I took to invest in myself as a professional within the Fagron Group. The rush and collections of daily life do not allow us to have these moments of reflection, evaluation, and search for evolution. And I had that moment. After the FMP, I started another graduate, a leadership course, and opened my mind to grow more and more. – Stefanie Archilli (Mentee)

It has been a very refreshing opportunity to see how similar we all are, the challenges and successes we all have, and learn how we can be better communicators. My biggest takeaway is that it is important to listen and reflect. – Amy Jones (mentor)

As we can see from these words, the Mentorship Program is a step that we are taking to encourage women to challenge themselves and learn from their mentors so that we can cultivate diverse and inclusive culture. When women mentor women, they can provide guidance on navigating their careers, advice on skill development, ongoing support, and accelerate their development.

By aiming to promote gender equality at the management level we are giving ambitious women the chance to be linked to a woman in a (senior) management position. This way, we hope to encourage women’s career advancement.

By the end of 2025, we aim for:

  • 50/50 male-female distribution in all management
  • 1/3rd of the senior management is female

In 2021, women made up 40.7% of all management, meaning there is work to be done to reach this target. The goal to have women make up one-third of senior management has been achieved in 2021 (making up 34.1%).

We want to keep nurturing opportunities for women to become leaders and, currently, we are working on the 2023 edition of the FMP. Stay tuned to get to know more about this year’s program!

If you want to get to know more about Careers opportunities at Fagron, please visit fagron.com/careers.