Scholarship places now available on our Mentoring Women in Business programme!

We are delighted to announce a host of brand-new Mentoring scholarship places, brought to you by Huriya Private.

Since the launch of our Mentoring Women in Business programme in 2010, almost 5,000 women entrepreneurs from more than 100 countries have participated as mentees. These mentees are matched with a mentor, an experienced businessperson, for a cross-border, entirely online mentoring relationship. Both being a mentee and being a mentor are incredibly enriching and fulfilling experiences.

The mentoring programme has traditionally been funded by our corporate partners, who also contribute mentors from their own workforces and cover the cost of participation of both mentors and their mentees. Since earlier in 2021, we have also been able to offer our independent mentoring opportunity to mentor to those who can self-fund their participation and that of their mentee, without the need to be part of a partner’s workforce.

However, thanks to our new partnership with Huriya Private, we are excited to be offering the opportunity to become a mentor—for free—to 50 former participants on our programmes, as part of our new Scholarship. This then supports a total of 100 women with the inclusion of their mentees.

If you are a woman who is part of our alumni community and want to become a mentor, make sure you sign up to our newsletter using the form at the bottom of this page to find out when applications open!

I learned a lot from my mentees, they were brilliant businesswomen whose insight and perspective I really valued.

Katerina Pawlowska-Hanafin, COO of Huriya Private

We are excited to be launching the Mentoring Scholarship and look forward to offering this opportunity to more women entrepreneurs in low and middle income countries who have previously participated in our programmes. Offering scholarships means we can further support the talented and experienced women entrepreneurs in our alumni community and enable them to continue their professional growth, while reaching even more women as their mentees.

Katerina Pawlowska-Hanafin, COO of Huriya Private, has previously twice been a mentor on the mentoring programme, and so recognises the benefits this opportunity will provide to mentors as well as the mentees they support. She said: “As a mentor, I really enjoyed the opportunity to support entrepreneurs from all over the world. I learned a lot from my mentees, they were brilliant businesswomen whose insight and perspective I really valued. I am delighted that at Huriya Private we will be able to give women entrepreneurs from low and middle income countries the opportunity to benefit from Mentoring scholarship places and continue their professional growth as mentors.”

Developing business and personal skills are a key part of the mentoring journey for both mentees and mentors. Mentee turned mentor, Van Dang, CEO and Founder of Savvycomm in Hanoi, Vietnam, can speak personally to the benefits of being both a mentee and a mentor. When we spoke to her earlier this year, she said:

“Being a mentee was a wonderful experience, not only for me but for my mentor too, and we’re still friends. We worked on business strategy and had great conversations. I also wanted the experience of being a mentor; I knew that a mentor can help the mentee but also learns from her as well. And I wanted to give back to this community that had helped me grow.

I believe that mentoring is a must in any entrepreneur’s journey. I think we can really inspire each other and gain confidence from one another that the direction we are going in is the right one. It makes our lives more meaningful.”

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