Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor. Sylvia Ann Hewlett
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and Anré Williams (American Express), Debbie Storey (AT&T), Geri Thomas (Bank of America), Aimee George Leary (Booz Allen Hamilton), Erika D’Egidio (Bristol-Myers Squibb), Barbara Adachi (Deloitte), Dwight Robinson (Freddie Mac), Monica Poindexter (Genentech), Rosalind Hudnell (Intel), Fiona Cannon (Lloyds Banking Group), Keisha Smith and Jeffrey Siminoff (Morgan Stanley), Patricia Fili-Krushel, Patricia Langer, and Craig Robinson (NBCUniversal). Their generous support has gone well beyond funding. Over the past two years these corporate leaders provided precious access and lent wise counsel. A big thank you.
I am appreciative of the support of the co-chairs of the Task Force for Talent Innovation—Caroline Carr, Anthony Carter, Valerie Grillo, Deborah Elam, Anne Erni, Patricia Fili-Krushel, Gail Fierstein, Cassandra Frangos, Sandy Hoffman, Patricia Langer, Carolyn Buck Luce, Leena Nair, Lisa Garcia Quiroz, Craig Robinson, Lucy Sorrentini, Karyn Twaronite, and Melinda Wolfe—for their belief in the importance of this study, and their ongoing dedication to the mission of our organization.
A special word of thanks to Melinda Merino and Adi Ignatius of Harvard Business Review. Their commitment to this project was critical to getting this book off the ground. Thanks also to Courtney Cashman and Jennifer Waring at HBR for valuable contributions on the editorial front. I am hugely indebted to my daughter Lisa Weinert, the literary agent for this book, who encouraged me to transform dense research into much more narrative-driven prose. Her advice was spot on.
A word of thanks to Jennifer Abbondanza, Noni Allwood, Anita Bafna, Ella Bell, Wendy Berk, Cherie Booth Blair, Gail Blanke, Fleur Bothwick, Ken Bouver, Steve Burke, James Charrington, Kenneth Chenault, Sharda Cherwoo, Joanna Coles, Audrey Connolly, Jo Diamond, Danica Dilligard, Melinda Dodd, Brady Dougan, Ed Gadsden, Kent Gardiner, Eileen Garvey, Buck Gee, Joss Gill, Ed Gilligan, Kate Grussing, Sunita Holzer, Mellody Hobson, Linda Huber, Jane Hyun, Anne Jenkins, Charlotte Jones, Mike Kacsmar, Tasha Kersey, Laila Khan, Anand Kini, Sallie Krawcheck, Julita Lange, Paige Lillard, Janet Loesberg, Sian McIntyre, Tim Melville-Ross, Yvette Miley, Stacè Millender, Eleanor Mills, Helena Morrissey, Rajashree Nambiar, Iesha O’Deneal, Katherine Phillips, Trevor Phillips, Merima Platt, Adam Quinton, David Richardson, Steve Richardson, Rosa Ramos-Kwok, Farrell Redwine, Joy-Ann Reid, Dagmar Rosa-Bjorkeson, Jeanne Rosario, Amy Schulman, Todd Sears, Jane Shaw, Veronica Sheehan, Diana Solash, Xaio-Yu Song, Debora Spar, Ruth Spellman, Mark Stephanz, Joe Stringer, Peninah Thomson, Priya Trauber, Julie Watson, Dan Wildman, Anne Williams, Donna Wilson, and Shawna Wilson—and all the women and men who took part in focus groups, interviews, and Insights In-Depth sessions.
I’m deeply appreciative of the research support and editorial talents of the CTI team: Michael Abrams, Joseph Cervone, Fabiola Dieudonné, Colin Elliott, Courtney Emerson, Christina Fargnoli, Catherine Fredman, Tara Gonsalves, Lawrence Jones, Anne Mathews, Andrea Turner Moffitt, Birgit Neu, Nicholas Sanders, Sandra Scharf, and Roopa Unnikrishan. I also want to thank Bill McCready, Stefan Subias, and the team at Knowledge Networks, who fielded the survey and were an invaluable resource throughout the course of this research.
Last but not least, a heartfelt thank you to the representatives of the seventy-five members of the Task Force for Talent Innovation for providing cutting-edge ideas and impressive amounts of collaborative energy: Elaine Aarons, Rohini Anand, Redia Anderson, Renee Anderson, Antoine Andrews, Diane Ashley, Nadine Augusta, Terri Austin, Ann Beynon, Anne Bodnar, Kenneth Charles, Daina Chiu, Tanya Clemons, Joel Cohen, Desiree Dancy, Nicola Davidson, Whitney Delich, Nancy Di Dia, Mike Dunford, Lance Emery, Linda Emery, Traci Entel, Nicole Erb, Anne Fulenwider, Michelle Gadsden-Williams, Trevor Gandy, Heide Gardner, Tim Goodell, Kathy Hannan, Kara Helander, Ginger Hildebrand, Alex Hiller, Ann Hollins, Kate Hoepfner-Karle, Celia Pohani Huber, Annalisa Jenkins, Nia Joynson-Romanzina, Eman Khalifa, Inci Korkmaz, Denice Kronau, Janina Kugel, Frances Laserson, Janice Little, Yolanda Londono, Lori Massad, Donna-Marie Maxfield, Ana Duarte McCarthy, Beth McCormick, Mark McLane, Sylvester Mendoza, Carmen Middleton, Erica Nemser, Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, Pamela Paul, Susan Reid, Kari Reston, Jennifer Rickard, Karin Risi, Jacqueline Rolf, Michael Springer, Eileen Taylor, Jennifer Tice, Lynn Utter, Cassy Van Dyke, Vera Vitels, Jo Weiss, Margaret Luciano-Williams, Meryl Zausner, and Fatemeh Ziai.
Introduction
My Story
My understanding of the power of sponsorship is rooted in my childhood. I grew up in a family of six sisters in a small town in the Welsh mining valleys. In the 1960s, this corner of Britain was a bleak and barren place. Across the coalfield, the collieries were closing down; unemployment hovered at 28 percent. As a girl child, there was not much you could look forward to. Maybe you could marry an unemployed miner? You could always do that.
But my father—very much the working-class bloke—had plans for his daughters. When I was thirteen, he took me by bus to Cambridge to show me the “dreaming spires” of one of Europe’s most beautiful and distinguished universities.
After two days seeing the sights (Kings College Chapel and Trinity’s Renaissance Library stand out in my memory) and taking in a debate at the Cambridge Union, my dad was ready to deliver the message. Over a plate of beans and toast (we’d found a cheap greasy spoon we felt comfortable in), he stared me in the eye and told me straight: “If you work hard, you can go here.” His voice was hard-edged with urgent passion. “I promise you, girl, Cambridge will change your life.” I was mesmerized.
My dad’s advice was simple enough. But was it realistic? What chance did I have of getting in? I attended a third-rate state school that had never sent anyone to either Oxford or Cambridge. But it wasn’t just my schooling, in a variety of ways I was a long way from being standard Oxbridge material. Until this bus trip, I had never eaten in a restaurant or stayed in a hotel, and I lacked some of the most elementary social skills. I had no small talk and was clueless when it came to figuring out which fork to use when tackling peas or fish. To cap things off, I spoke English with a thick Welsh accent—the kiss of death in upper-crust British society.
As it turned out, my father’s challenge wasn’t so unrealistic. My unsophisticated dad—quite unwittingly—had gotten it right. Times were a-changing and I did have a shot at getting into Oxbridge. A women’s liberation movement was getting off the ground, and Harold Wilson (the new Labor prime minister) was kicking off a campaign to force the ancient universities to open their doors much more widely to two types of students: females and kids from the wrong side of the tracks. I qualified on both scores.
But I’m getting ahead of my story. After that trip to Cambridge, I returned to my mediocre Welsh school fired up and focused. I knew I had to ace both O- and A-levels and do very well on a barrage of highly specialized Oxford and Cambridge entrance examinations. The head teacher at my school washed her hands of the entrance exams, saying that the school could not offer preparation beyond A-level. But as I sent away for sets of past papers and delved in on my own, I got an offer of unofficial help from Miss Gwen Jones, my A-level English teacher. She told me I had special potential and that I reminded her of her sixteen-year-old self. Perhaps she wanted to provide the kind of support she herself had failed to find as a young person? Whatever the reason, Miss Jones offered invaluable help, assigning me challenging essays and giving me detailed feedback during the critical months leading up to A-levels and the Oxbridge entrance examinations. As Miss Jones saw it, she was not providing Oxbridge prep (by her own admission, she knew very little about the specifics of the examinations). Rather, she was trying to turn me into a good writer. She felt that if I learned to write with clarity and style, it might compensate for not being well drilled in other ways. We kept our tutoring sessions under the radar, meeting during lunch break and after classes in a small space under the stairs, away from the hustle and bustle of the school. We would cram two chairs under the stairwell and work away on essay drafts. I was enormously grateful for her practical help, but even more grateful for her belief in me. That someone in authority thought I had academic potential bolstered my resolve enormously.
Raw desire, a huge level of focus, and at least some hands-on help paid off. Four years later, I won admission to Cambridge University. I remember the scene so clearly: the telegram came on January 25—my birthday. My mum was feeling poorly (baby number six, born when she was forty-five-years old, had left her exhausted and depleted), and that Saturday morning she’d asked me to do a little clean up in our front garden (a rather grand word for the coal-dusted square of