Mentors and Role Models –
Best Practices in Many Cultures
Global Tech Women Voices - 2015
By Katy Dickinson
Founder, Mentoring Standard
URL: mentoringstandard.com
Email: dickinson@mentoringstandard.com

Abstract: Mentors and Role Models
Mentoring is a professional methodology with remarkably good payback. This talk presents
how mentors, mentees, and their home organizations can make the most of these best practices,
including how to start up and measure a mentoring program. Examples will come from successful
corporate, governmental, and school-based mentoring programs in Brazil, China, India, the USA,
Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
Program success 2001-2010 at Sun Microsystems (a Silicon Valley Engineering company)
was measured at over 1,000% return on investment (ROI) with more than twice the normal
promotions, 93% satisfaction, 88% mentors working remotely from mentees in 30 global sites,
and 70% executive mentors. Many of today’s stories will come from Sun - and also the U.S. State
Department's TechWomen mentoring program for STEM professional women.
Since 2011, 250 mentors from 89 Silicon Valley companies have hosted TechWomen
Emerging Leaders from the Middle East and Africa who then return to their home countries to be
mentors and role models for girls and young women. Illustrations for the talk will come from
sources including the very successful "Notable Women in Computing Card Deck" Kickstarter
project and the "TechWomen Emerging Leaders from the Middle East and Africa" project.
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Let’s start with 108 Role Models…
A role model is a person whose behavior, example, or success can be emulated by others.
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Notable Technical Women
http://www.notabletechnicalwomen.org/
• Women have been leaders in computing
from the start, but not enough of our
contributions are remembered. Keep our history.
• Why this project? Watch these 2 videos:
– Jessica Dickinson Goodman introduces “Notable
Women in Computing” Kickstarter (1 min.45 sec., Oct. 2014)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jessidg/notable-
women-in-computing-card-deck
– Katy Dickinson on why pick these particular women (1
min.26 sec., Oct.2014)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jessidg/notable-
women-in-computing-card-deck/posts/1024426
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Notable Women Project History
• Professor Susan H. Rodger (Professor of the Practice, Duke University), Katy Dickinson
(Founder, Mentoring Standard), and Katy’s daughter Jessica Dickinson Goodman (Washington
State - Legislative Session Aide, and digital communications specialist), collaborated.
• Jessica suggested a card deck honoring 54 notable technical women drawn from a larger
research list. Katy and Susan contacted the honorees and wrote the text, Jessica designed the
cards and managed logistics and production – and the Kickstarter project.
• The project goal is to present remarkable, successful, and diverse technical women as role
models. We want girls and women to see a future for themselves in these cards.
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
Susan
Opening
the 1st
Card Box
October
2014

Katy & Jessica
August 2014
- Designing
the Cards While
Camping.

Selection & Distribution
• Distribution:
– 1st at Grace Hopper Conference (GHC14)
– 2nd through Kickstarter (raised 5x initial requested funding)
– Now through notabletechnicalwomen.org
• All profits go to sending cards and posters to educators around the world. Over
3,000 cards have been distributed. Here is where the first 500 decks of cards went:
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Playing with Role Models
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Find members of the South Asian Diaspora?
Memory matching game – Beirut, Lebanon
Find the cards of Latinas or Hispanic women?
Cards at School – New Hampshire USA

Role Models & Mentors
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Duy-Loan Le 
whose corporate and
civic leadership in
both Viet Nam and
the USA have
advanced education
and inspired technical
leadership.
 Fran Allen – the 1st
woman to win the ACM
Turing Award, mentored
and encouraged
generations of technical
women at the annual
Grace Hopper Conference.

What Do Mentors Do?
Mentors advise and inspire.
In short, practical terms:
1. Mentors make introductions – to people, to
programs or companies.
2. Mentors give recommendations to best resources
– reading, classes, experiences.
3. Mentors give feedback for the mentee to consider.
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Benefits of Mentoring
to Mentees
• Greater productivity, competence.
• Enhanced professional confidence.
• Reduced job-related stress.
• Better interpersonal relationships.
• Larger personal and professional network.
• Understanding of their career path.
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Benefits of Mentoring
to Mentors
• A mentoring program cannot succeed without
experienced and reliable mentors, preferably
mentors who come back year after year.
• What motivates a senior executive or technical
developer to spend up to four hours a month with a
mentee?
1. Giving time to help others - paying it forward.
2. Developing mentor’s coaching and leadership skills.
3. Extending professional and personal networks (mentor and mentee).
4. New understanding on the most effective ways to work and
knowledge of their own company or organization.
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Key Value of Mentoring
to Companies and Organizations
• Productivity gains.
• Leadership and career development.
• Diversity awareness and support.
• Retention improvement and staff satisfaction.
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Mentoring vs. Coaching
vs. Sponsorship
Power Topic Duration Boundaries Reward
Sponsor Hierarchical
or positional
authority
Succession
planning,
leadership
building
Long-Term:
many years
Part of regular
work
Career
direction,
protection
during growth
Coach Special
knowledge
Transfer of
specific
information,
tools
Short-Term:
class or
program
duration
School or
training
program’s
scope and
management
Student:
passing a test
Coach:
payment
Mentor Wisdom
authority
Career or
personal
growth
Mid-Term: 6
to 12 months
Mentoring
program’s
scope and
management
Mutual
learning,
recommendat
ions, feedback
Copyright Katy Dickinson 2015 Mentors & Role Models - Voices 2015 13
Based on 2014 work by Everwise, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Professional Mentoring Program
Example 1: TechWomen
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Heba Hosny (TechWomen 2012 Emerging
Leader) is a software Engineer in Egypt. A group
of TechWomen mentors raised money so that
Heba could return to the USA in 2013 to present
her project at a conference held at the MIT
Media Lab.
Josette Tejan-Cole (TechWomen 2013 EL) is a
petroleum Engineer in Sierra Leone. While in
California, two TechWomen mentors helped
Josette to spend a morning with a Vice President
of a major oil company, discussing her career and
education plans.
TechWomen empowers, connects, and supports the next generation of women leaders in
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) from 21 countries in Africa,
Central Asia, and the Middle East. Includes 5-weeks in the San Francisco Bay Area and
Silicon Valley (company projects, professional workshops, networking events), then
meetings in Washington, D.C. TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). The women return home to become
mentors in their home communities.

What Happens Next?
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Adla Chatila (TechWomen 2012 Emerging
Leader) hosted Katy and Jessica in Lebanon
after the 2013 TechWomen Jordan
Delegation – including tours of the
Makassed schools where the Notable
Women cards are now being used.
Nezha Larhrisi (TechWomen 2013 EL)
hosted the whole TechWomen 2014
Morocco Delegation in her home in Rabat -
complete with a drum band and kaftan
fashion show!
250 mentors from 89 Silicon Valley companies have served in the TechWomen program,
working with 156 mentees from 16 countries, since the first term in 2011. About half of the
160 mentors in 2014 had been TechWomen mentors before. 5 new countries were added in
Central Asia for 2015.
After TechWomen Emerging Leaders return home, Mentors travel to Africa and the Middle
East to participate in delegation trips to expand networks and relationships of girls and
women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Mentoring and Culture
• Not all languages have a word for “mentoring” or “mentor” or “mentee”.
• In October 2014, two TechWomen leaders from the Middle East made seven
videos to explain - in Arabic - how mentoring works in their culture.
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 Listen to Seham Al Jaafreh
from Jordan speak on
“Mentoring in Arab Culture”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI
4ri89rTtQ (1 min.23 sec.)
The set of videos on mentoring topics
by Seham Al Jaafreh and Mai Temraz is
available free on
www.youtube.com/user/KatyDickinson

Mentors & Mentees: South Africa
January 2015 TechWomen Delegation
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TechWomen Photo by Max Mogale

Program Example 2: Sun Microsystems
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• Between 1996-2010, over 7,300 technical employees participated in very
successful formal mentoring programs at Sun Microsystems.
• External analysis reported Sun’s got over 1,000% return on investment (ROI).
• Other remarkable Sun metrics: more than twice the normal promotions,
93% satisfaction, 88% mentors working remotely (with mentees in 30 global
sites), and 70% executive mentors.
• Special mentoring terms were developed for China, India, Germany, Israel,
Russia, Czech Republic, France, and Ireland.

Much Quoted Sun Metrics
Even before the 2006 Gartner report on Sun mentoring, and the 1996-2009
Sun Labs Technical Report, Sun’s mentoring programs were evaluated
extensively – indicating both the importance and rarity of detailed metrics on
professional mentoring. Some of the published reports:
• 2003: Catalyst: Bit by Bit: Catalyst’s Guide to Advancing Women in High Tech Companies.
• 2006: National Center for Women & Information Technology, NCWIT: “How Do You Mentor
Technical Women at Work? Sun Engineering Enrichment and Development (SEED) Program
(Case Study 1)”.
• 2007: Triple Creek Associates: “Mentoring’s Impact on Mentors – Doubling the ROI of
Mentoring”.
• 2010: Bellevue University’s Human Capital Lab: “Sun Microsystems Mentoring Program”.
• 2011: Lisa Quast, Forbes: “How Becoming a Mentor Can Boost Your Career” (31 Oct 11).
• 2013: Chronus Mentoring & Talent Development Solutions: “Why Corporate Mentoring? Five
Benefits of a Workplace Mentoring Program” (25 Aug 13).
• 2013: David Butcher, Thomasnet - Industry News: “How to Be an Effective Mentor” (11 Nov
13).
• 2014: Joan Axelrod-Contrada, The Boston Globe - Business “The Right Mentor Can Help You
Get Ahead” (14 Sep 14).
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Mentoring Success at Sun
“Some of the successful approaches that companies may use for recruiting,
retaining, and advancing more women in computing, as well as in other
technical professions, include: ...Implement[ing] a mentoring program.
Indeed, make mentoring, which positively impacts career advancement
and satisfaction, a basic part of the organizational culture. Sun
Microsystems’ SEED program, for example, is regarded as a major step in
this direction.”
“Women in Computing – Take 2” by Maria Klawe, Telle Whitney, and Caroline Simard,
Communications of the ACM, Volume 52, No. 2, February 2009
At the time of publication in 2009:
• Maria Klawe: President of Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA. Prior to joining HMC, she
served as Dean of engineering and professor of computer science at Princeton University. She
is a former president of ACM.
• Telle Whitney: President and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, Palo
Alto, CA.
• Caroline Simard: Director of Research, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.
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Best Practices /
Worst Practices
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This is the single most popular page from the
“Sun Mentoring 1996 – 2009” Report:
• In 2008, Senior Software Staff Engineer and
mentor Mary Artibee gave her “Mentoring isn’t
Rocket Science” talk at Sun Microsystems.
• With Mary’s permission, part of her talk was
published in “Sun Mentoring 1996 – 2009” and
was also on a 2-page handout advertising the
Report at the Hopper Conference (2009).
• Best/Worst was included in the inaugural
TechWomen “Mentor Guide” (2011).
• It was republished in the Xerox-ABI
“Mentoring Guide” (2013).
• Best/Worst was republished yet again in
“Mentoring in a Box” set by Everwise, and also on
a Talent Management360 blog (2014).

Key Mentoring Learning at Sun
From “5 Years of Mentoring by the Numbers” report to the Hopper Conference, 2006:
Key Learnings:
– Strong, consistent, visible executive sponsorship is essential.
– Participant selection must be fair & be seen to be fair.
– Take a long term view: mentoring is about learning, and creating relationships and
community.
– Have a quick “no fault divorce” option if the mentoring pair is not getting along.
– Mentoring vs. Patronage needs to be explicitly discussed to establish realistic
expectations.
– Partnership between Human Resources (Personnel) and Engineering works well for
both.
– Pick your battles – focus on improving a few related success metrics at a time.
– Involve the mentee's manager in the process and program.
– Never run a satisfaction survey the day after a reduction in force.
– Don't expect or promise miracles. The goal is not perfection but improvement.
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Sun Mentoring Program Challenges
From “5 Years of Mentoring by the Numbers” report to the Hopper Conference, 2006:
Program Startup Barriers
• “What's in it for me?” From the various stakeholder groups, especially managers and
potential mentors.
• “Who owns the program – HR or Engineering?” (A partnership was the answer.)
• Finding the right program manager in Engineering – someone who had credibility.
Ongoing Challenges
• Hand-matching Mentees to executive Mentors is very time consuming and does not scale.
Even in an Engineering population of many thousands, only a certain number of executives
are available at a time.
• “Not invented here” was a problem. Some groups wanted their own local program.
• Language and culture barriers can reduce success and satisfaction.
• Time zone problems get in the way of world-wide conference calls. Travel costs get in the way
of world- wide events.
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How to Start a Mentoring Program?
Resolving 9 key questions early in the mentoring program design process will help
everyone understand their goals and measures more clearly - and will socialize the
scope and implications of the program.
1. What is the primary goal of this program?
2. What problem are you solving?
3. Why a mentoring program? (as opposed to another kind of program.)
4. Who is the customer? (target population? consumer? beneficiary?)
5. Structure of mentoring program (one-on-one? groups? how many?)
6. Who will be responsible long-term for the program, if it continues?
7. What advisors, experts are needed to make this program succeed?
8. What are program constraints? (funding? location? schedule? process?)
9. Are resources available? (Any budget or staff? What are the limits of these
resources?)
Based on 2014 work by Everwise, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Copyright Katy Dickinson 2015 Mentors & Role Models - Voices 2015 24

12 Best Practices
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A review of academic and industry report on a wide variety of mentoring programs
yielded these twelve most-common practices for success. The research was done for
the “Lifetime Value of Mentoring” poster, presented at the Hopper Conference 2013.
1.Program Benefits and Goals Clear
2.Strong Management Support
3.Mentors, Mentees Selected
4.Detailed Data Reporting
5.Meeting 3 or More Times / Month
6.Match for 6 or More Months
7.One-on-One Mentor-Mentee
8.Mentor Training / Orientation Given
9.Program Continues and Improves for Years
10.Some Remote Meetings
11.Paid Program Staff
12.Ongoing Support Provided by Staff

5 Key Success Elements
1. Strong and visible long-term executive sponsorship and funding.
2. “Real work – real time” Mentoring and being mentored is professional
work done as a part of a day job, during business hours.
3. Well-managed program (including Process, Training and Educational
Materials, Management and Web Tools, and Staff) attracts and supports a
wide diversity of participants from many cultures.
4. The program is run for the convenience of the mentors – to respect their
time and experience, to keep everyone safe and productive.
5. Automated web tools and individualization are balanced to accommodate
the size and seniority of the group served.
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Most Common Program Mistakes
1. No program staff, or expecting staff to create and manage the program in
their spare time.
2. Taking all applicants – not having clear and implemented selection criteria
for both mentors and mentees.
3. Not allowing enough time for the relationship to develop between the
mentee and mentor – not setting clear time and delivery expectations.
4. Not collecting early feedback from both mentee and mentor, so startup
problems can be addressed effectively.
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Mentoring in a Box
14 free documents to support creating a small mentoring program for professionals,
the set includes:
1. Mentoring in a Box: Read Me First
2. Everwise Partnership Kickoff Guide
3. Everwise Getting Started Guide
4. Metrics Tracking Spreadsheet Template
5. Mentoring in a Box – Mentoring Program Manager – Resources
– 5.1 Mentoring Program Manager – Overview and Contents
– 5.2 Mentoring Program Manager – Basic Guidance
– 5.3 Mentoring Program Manager – Templates and Samples – Letters and Emails
– 5.4 Template: Kickoff Call Agenda, Presentation Contents
– 5.5 Everwise Mentoring in a Box, Sample Spreadsheet: Protégé Roster
– 5.6 Template: Pilot Program Candidate Selection
– 5.7 Sample Pilot Results Report
6. Everwise: Mentor Recruitment
7. Expert Mentoring Advice: Best Practices / Worst Practices
8. Everwise: Mentoring vs. Coaching vs. Sponsorship
“Mentoring in a Box” 14 document set is by Katy Dickinson and the Everwise team (2014).
Available for free download: http://go.geteverwise.com/mentoring-resources-start
Copyright Katy Dickinson 2015 Mentors & Role Models - Voices 2015 28

Resources 1
– “Case Study: Workforce Analytics at Sun” by James Holincheck, Gartner Research ID #G00142776
(27 October 2006).
– “CRA-W and Anita Borg Institute Wikipedia Project – Writing Wikipedia Pages for Notable Women
in Computing” project: http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/wikipedia/
– “Effective Mentor Recruitment” by Michael Garringer, National Mentoring Center, US Department
of Education’s Mentoring Resource Center, 2006:
http://educationnorthwest.org/sites/default/files/recruitment.pdf
– “Expert Mentoring Advice: Best Practices / Worse Practices” by Katy Dickinson, 2014:
https://katysblog.wordpress.com/2014/12/05/expert-mentoring-advice-best-practices-worst-practices/
– “Evaluating a Mentoring Program Guide” by the National Center for Women & Information
Technology, NCWIT, 2011: http://www.ncwit.org/resources/evaluating-mentoring-program-guide
– Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing – Annual Conference: http://gracehopper.org/
– “How Do You Mentor Technical Women at Work? Sun Engineering Enrichment and Development
(SEED) Program (Case Study 1)” by the National Center for Women & Information Technology, NCWIT,
2005: http://www.ncwit.org/resources/how-do-you-mentor-technical-women-work-sun-engineering-
enrichment-and-development-seed
– Katy Dickinson YouTube Channel – for more videos by Seham Al Jaafreh and Mai Temraz on
Mentoring: https://www.youtube.com/user/KatyDickinson
– “Lifetime Value of Mentoring” poster by Katy Dickinson, presented at the Grace Hopper Conference
(2013). http://www.spcoast.com/pub/Katy/GHC13.mentoringposter.Sep2013.Final.small.pdf
Copyright Katy Dickinson 2015 29Mentors & Role Models - Voices 2015

Resources 2
– “Mentoring in a Box” 14 document set presenting best practices and structure for small mentoring
programs, by Katy Dickinson and the Everwise team (2014). Available for free download:
http://go.geteverwise.com/mentoring-resources-start
– “Notable Women in Computing Card Deck” (Kickstarter - October-November 2014):
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jessidg/notable-women-in-computing-card-deck
– Notable Women in Tech (cards and posters) – free download available:
http://www.notabletechnicalwomen.org/
– TechWomen Mentoring Program: http://www.techwomen.org/
– Triangular Partnership: the Power of the Diaspora, Edited by Enawgaw Mehari, and Kinfe
Gebeyehu, Katy Dickinson, Matt Watts, 2013: People to People, p.42 ff chapter by Katy Dickinson:
“Professional Mentoring: Fostering Triangular Partnership”
http://new.peoplepeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Triangular-Partnership.pdf
– “Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009″ by Katy Dickinson, Tanya Jankot and Helen Gracon, Sun Labs Report
TR-2009-185 (August 2009).
http://spcoast.com/pub/Katy/SunMentoring1996-2009.smli_tr-2009-185.pdf
– Using Notable Women Card Decks in Teaching -
http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/wikipedia/cardsusing.html
Except as marked, all presentation images and photos are 2008-2015 Copyright by Katy Dickinson.
Notable Technical Women materials are under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
U.S. License.
Copyright Katy Dickinson 2015 30Mentors & Role Models - Voices 2015

About
Katy Dickinson is the Founder of Mentoring Standard. She has
designed and managed successful mentoring programs in
the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.
She has held senior executive roles at Everwise, People to
People, MentorCloud, Huawei, and Sun Microsystems. At
Sun, she created and managed the global Engineering
mentoring programs for ten years.
Katy Dickinson was the Process Architect for the first class of the
U.S. State Department’s TechWomen mentoring program.
She was a Member of the Anita Borg Institute Advisory
Board, and a Lecturer for the University of California at
Berkeley Engineering class on entrepreneurship for many
years. She is an author, speaker, and popular blogger on
Katysblog.wordpress.com
Copyright Katy Dickinson 2015 Mentors & Role Models - Voices 2015 31
High quality mentoring changes lives. Until now there has been no clear way to measure
mentoring and program effectiveness in an objective, comparable system, and there has been very
little data published by mentoring programs. Mentoring Standard is a new venture from experts
with deep experience in building successful international mentoring programs. Mentoring Standard
has the vision to create an international norm and assessment of quality and achievement for both
mentors and mentoring programs, with an associated system and process for accreditation and
certification. Mentoringstandard.com
2014 Photo by Saul Bromberger for TechWomen