Description

What is the Featured Panelists Spotlight?

Our Featured Panelists Spotlight will be held every first Wednesday of each month. During the Featured Panelists Spotlight, we invite guest panelists to share their experiences, insights, tips and strategies that they have found to be effective in their professional or personal lives when tackling the featured topic for the month.

June Featured Topic – Finding Sponsors and Mentors in the Workplace

In its simplest form, a mentor is someone with greater experience who can provide you with support and guidance at work, while a sponsor is someone who is usually a senior-level person in your organization with power and influence who will advocate for you to land key opportunities at work that are aimed at helping advance your career

As they say, it “takes a village”, and trying to move up the corporate ladder by yourself without the support of others can be a daunting task. No doubt you will need the cooperation of your colleagues, your bosses and even your direct reports to meet work goals and accomplish tasks, but its equally essential to find supportive mentors and sponsors who can guide you along your career. These mentors and sponsors can often provide access to people with the power and influence to impact your assignments, role or position within your organization, they can guide you to fruitful opportunities for you, and most importantly, they act as an endorsement of you and your capabilities.

As your career develops, so should your network of mentors and sponsors. Consider your mentors as your personal board of directors to provide guidance on the different aspects of your career, and your sponsor as someone who believes in your talent and skills and is comfortable advocating on your behalf, especially in circumstances where you are being considered for better roles or positions without an opportunity for you to advocate for yourself.

Some organizations have formal mentoring programs but the best mentor and sponsor relationships generally come about organically. Our panelists today will discuss the ways to identify those individuals within your organization or outside of it that would be good sponsors and mentors, and will share their strategies in how to best connect and optimize relationships with mentors and sponsors.

Panelists

Penny Williams, VP at VoxyEngen, heads demand gen and brand development to help more immigrants, refugees and non-native English speakers identify and fulfill career goals through strong language skills. Penny is a strategic marketing professional skilled at identifying business needs and developing effective marketing campaigns to drive user engagement and increase company revenue. She is passionate about analyzing data to provide strategic guidance for marketing plans and initiatives, including post-launch optimization to goals and adjustments where needed. She is also a forward-thinking leader with demonstrated creativity, the ability to innovate and champion new ideas, and strong project management skills. Penny was a Huddle Mentor with The Koa Club’s 2021 Powerful Women Follow My Lead Program, a leadership program for women in the private sector.

See also The Koa Club TV Channel interview with Penny found on Interview with Penny Williams – Fearless with Your Personal Brand

Alix Han has over 20 years of experience in designing and shipping software products. Alix is a veteran of corporations such as Microsoft, Amazon, and startups in which she has launched many v1 products like Zillow, AWS Marketplace, Qumulo, and Microsoft OfficeLive. She is also an inventor on 6 utility patents and is currently a UX Design Lead at Google Cloud. 

See also The Koa Club TV Channel interview with Alix found on Interview with Alix Han – Rocking the World Her Own Way

A respected thought leader and experienced employment lawyer, Cara Ching-Senaha is Sr. Employment Counsel at Workday, a global software technology company. Cara has donated thousands of hours of her own time on a wide range of passion projects that includes serving on The Koa Club’s Advisory Board since its formation; as a founding member of the California Lawyer Association’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion executive committee; and as former Board member and enthusiastic leader of the Rings mentorship program for LWT’s WILpower program (https://www.lwtleadership.org).

Location/ Date & Time

Online via Zoom only:

*****Zoom link will be provided in the RSVP confirmation email and is also in the Event Page*******

1. Date:  Tuesday, June 28, 2022 (Please note that we have moved this event from June 8th to June 28th)

Time: 12pm – 1:00pmPT/1pm-2pmMT/2pm-3pmCT/3pm-4pmET

Who Can Attend & Fee

Public Event – Open to all members and non-members of The Koa Club