In February CareerWise sent a handful of our female apprentices to the Denver Business Journal’s “BizWomen Mentoring Monday” event. Business women from all over the metro area gathered for the opportunity to choose from 45 mentors for 10-minute career coaching sessions. Sydney, a CareerWise apprentice at CU’s Office of Information Technology, shares her experience at the event:
“Last week, I was able to participate in the Denver Business Journal’s Women in Business Mentoring Monday. It was an extremely surreal experience, in that, I was able to speak to women in all different fields of work and see their diverse perspectives. As someone who is very dedicated on going into an extremely specific field, it was interesting seeing what drove many of the women I met with to pursue these careers and how many of them did not originally set out to work in the places that they currently do. It was also extremely helpful for me to be able to hear advice from women, who are completely detached from my career path because it helped to show me universal ideas for career growth within the business world, not specifically focused upon the industry I want to go into. My major takeaway from the event is that it has helped me to truly see the value of having a backup plan, but still continuing to pursue your dreams because you never know what can happen.
My favorite piece of advice that I received was that you’re not always going to be offered exactly what you want (positions, projects, raises, etc.) sometimes you have to ask for them. Many of the women I met with actually told me this. This was extremely intriguing to hear because I always thought that you didn’t ask for positions and raises, but that you were selected based upon the quality of your work and that based upon the other potential candidates, the best match was selected. To me personally, this advice is extremely valuable because I’ve always thought it was “taboo” to discuss what you desire in respect to raises and promotions, so hopefully this advice will help me to vocalize the things I desire from my job, as I progress into that field.
Being able to speak to so many powerful women was probably one of the best things that I’ve ever experienced. Getting to hear them talk about the struggles they went through to get to where they are now and the importance of having more women within each of their industries was amazing and extremely informative. As someone who believes strongly in feminism, having more women in higher up positions, continuing to support other women on their pursuit of achieving their goals, was such an amazing thing to be a part of. Mentoring Monday was extremely empowering and I hope I have the ability to participate in it or something similar in the future. Overall, participating in Mentoring Monday has made me realize that I want to get to a point in my career one day where I can provide an advisory role to other women and help them to achieve the success that they desire within their current or future career.”