Editor’s notebook: Returning mentors passionate about connecting, getting insight
By Alexis Muellner – Editor, Tampa Bay Business Journal
Feb 16, 2018, 3:00am
I spent the bulk of our annual Mentoring Monday event talking to participants to learn what the event meant to them. I went searching for common themes that could be useful to readers and especially leaders looking to help their teams be successful, retain strong people and help women grow their careers.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman has been at all five local Mentoring Monday events and believes it’s her responsibility to reach out and help women she meets become successful. To help, she taps her own relationships.
“I connect them to help them get the job they are dreaming about,” she said, saying at each event she experiences consistent post-event follow-up with four to five women, opening doors to real opportunities.
This was the fourth year for New Market Partners CEO Joy Randels. Like Murman, she gets satisfaction from making a connection after the event with at least one woman to someone in the business community who can help them professionally.
“You have to learn to live vicariously through the success of others,” she said. “Once you become a manager of people and you are not the one just living on the front lines, it cannot be about you anymore.”
Mentor, author and speaker Debbie Lundberg utilizes the event to learn what the job force is missing.
“I remember that from last year that many of the women I talked to all have these skills that they could not necessarily market,” she said. To find the skills they can sell, she asks mentees, what are they most proud of? “They need to utilize skills they have, No.1, as a confidence builder, and No. 2, learn how to position those skills and third, know how to bring it all together.”
USF Health’s Director of Community Relations Joanne Sullivan is a returning mentor and sees her role as helping women get excited about goals, and to be a good listener.
“The best advice I got from a mentor was to stop talking so much,” she said. “It’s not about you, it’s about them and it’s amazing what happens to you when you stop thinking about yourself.”
For Polk State College’s CIO and VP of Strategic Innovation Naomi Boyer, there isn’t a mentee that she works with who isn’t also a mentor to her. “I work alongside with them and then I have the chance to communicate and relate to them so it’s a learning process.”
Alexandra McKeever, business development representative at Datavision, was a mentee this year. Because she’s new to the IT world, she sought advice on building the right relationships.
“I’m looking to know the best way to make connections and see which ones made [the mentors] successful and what they might change if they could do it all again.”
For Conversa Managing Partner Arlene DiBenigno, the event is all about giving back.
“We have a responsibility. To whom much is given, much is expected,” she said.
