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Advance mentoring summit 2024 – where Leaders inspire leaders

Over 250 mentees and mentors gathered at SIX to celebrate the successful closing of the mentoring wave 2023/24 and the new 2024/25 kick-off. Over 125 mentee-mentor pairs are starting their one-year mentoring journey, which is unique in Switzerland in terms of seniority, high quality and size.

Hannah Zaunmüller, Chief HR Officer at SIX Group, welcoming our guests on behalf of SIX, which generously hosted the event.
That’s the spirit! Speakers (from left to right): Alkistis Petropaki, Regula Rütti, Anne Halbritter, Mathilde Anderson, Malvika Singh, Linda de Winter, Christine Richartz

win-wins for mentees and mentors

The summit offered numerous opportunities to exchange and share experiences. One stage, Linda de Winter, mentor, and Christine Richartz, mentee, let us look behind the scenes of their mentoring journey and were a living proof that benefits and learnings go both ways.

“The biggest benefit of the mentoring program is for me to share some of my experiences with the mentee and to see how the mentee develops herself and profits from it.”

Linda de Winter
Chief Information Office (CIO) at Swisscard AECS GmbH

“I benefited the most from the time I invested in my development. I structured my goals and topics and through the validation of my mentor I gained more self-confidence.”

Christine Richartz
Head IT Corporate Clients at Swiss Life AG

Selection of concrete achievements

  • Gained self-confidence, reassurance, and executive presence
  • Now, I clearly know where I want to go while staying true to my personal values
  • Gained much of confidence in navigating a challenging stakeholder environment
  • Could increase my confidence and self-marketing skills as well as assertiveness and leadership
  • Discovered my long-term goal to become a C-level leader and made a concrete plan for how to reach it

Cheers to the many achievements and best of success to all mentees of the closing wave for your future endeavors! Best wishes to the new mentees for an impactful year ahead.

keynote on career sponsorship – THE CAREER FAIRY DOES NOT EXIST

While mentoring is crucial for career advancement, it is not enough, as Malvika Singh, Coach and Keynote Speaker, pointed out in her “Espresso shot”. Malvika underlined the importance for female talent to actively seek a sponsor to accelerate career advancement.

Key takeaways

  • A sponsor is an opportunity giver: A career sponsorship develops over time and aims at the sponsor advocating for a promotion when the sponsee is not in the room.
  • Mind the “like me bias”: Sponsors often prefer to sponsor people who are similar to them. A good sponsor chooses a sponsee based on talent and potential.
  • 10x: Always think of a bolder version of what you do. If you plan to sponsor one woman this year, make it 10.

Time for a big thank you!

A heartfelt thank you goes to our high-level mentors for their time and dedication to this program. Many of them have been with us for many years. Once again a big applause and thank you to all the participants and inspiring speakers, who shared their experiences and insights with us: Dr. Hannah Zaunmüller, Linda de Winter, Christine Richartz, and, of course, to the mastermind behind this program, Anne Halbritter together with her team members Regula Rütti and Mathilde Andersen.
 
Special thanks go to Malvika Singh, Co-Founder of Advance, for her enlightening “espresso shot” on the topic of “career sponsorship”, Alkistis Petropaki for her excellent moderation, Faye Witteveen and Priska Burkard for facilitating the workshops, and SIX and their dedicated team for generously hosting us at their fantastic Convention Point!

browse the photo gallery

With thanks to our photographers Linda Pollari – for the main event and apéro – and Sabrina Durante – for the mentee workshops.

Visit our event calendar and discover what’s coming next.
Event calendar

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