| I’m excited to have four new Mentees. I’ve been mentoring with WOMEN Unlimited, Inc. for 20+ years. Getting to know what’s important to these wonderful women and how I can help them grow as leaders lights me up. I didn’t have a named mentor during my years in corporate, someone I could talk with openly, truly trust to give me candid, objective feedback and draw out my best thinking. Sure, there were leaders whose input I sought at times. But I didn’t ask much because I was concerned about being viewed as an HR leader with a problem instead of viewing it as a leader with a challenge seeking another leader’s perspective. Hindsight is always 20-20, isn’t it? So, I mentor as my “do-for-others-what-you-wish-you’d-had-yourself.” To help women shift perspectives to see what they may not see. I’d like to tell you a little about WOMEN Unlimited, Inc.’s founder, Jean Otte. She was a delightful powerhouse who created WUI because of a significant negative experience in her career. She was a successful leader in a large corporation that was bought out. New top leadership didn’t like her style. A new peer (Robert) offered candid feedback on how she was received and said she’d derail her role if she didn’t change. It rocked Jean because being her true self was important to her. Intelligent and direct, with a caring heart and dry humor, were valued traits that had moved her up the ladder for years. Jean valued Robert’s perspective and appreciated his willingness to help her figure out what she must do to fit into this new culture. His feedback helped her get promoted to the executive level, the only female at that level. Eventually, she decided to start her own company – helping women learn “the rules of the game” that she’d learned. Jean knew most of her female colleagues in NYC didn’t have the benefit of candid, trustworthy mentors, as she had in Robert. She decided to turn lemons into lemonade. She developed a program and asked successful men and women to mentor women in leadership roles and with leadership potential. The majority said yes! After it was successful in a number of companies in NYC, she expanded to Orlando, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. WOMEN Unlimited, Inc. celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2019, sadly a year after Jean died. Her legacy lives on with dynamic graduates in companies like Deere & Company, Prudential Financial, Inc., Reynolds American, Inc., Siemens Corporation, and many more corporate partners around the U.S. I’m proud to be a WUI mentor and look forward to the adventure of getting to know my new team, what’s important to them as individuals, their goals, frustrations, etc. Helping women be unlimited is my jam. |
