EY’s Women Athletes Business Network mentoring program has joined forces with the International Women’s Forum to select and match 25 elite female athletes with prominent female business leaders who will support their transition to successful careers and leadership positions after retirement from sport.
Launched in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2013, EY’s Women Athletes Business Network has been building a bridge between women in the business world and female athletes, guiding them through their transition and creating new opportunities for highly successful and ambitious women athletes from around the world.
Recent research published by EY states that participation in sports plays a crucial role in developing leadership and team-building skills for women. According to the study, 94% of women executives have a background in sport and more than half of women in the C-suite played at the collegiate level.
The inaugural mentee class of 25 elite female athletes has been selected based on their potential to become impactful leaders after having reached a pinnacle in their athletic careers. Out of the 25 chosen, all with inspiring stories, 10 have won Olympic medals, two of whom were the first women to win an Olympic medal for their country.
The mentor professionals include a diverse group of CEOs, lawyers, entrepreneurs and other influential leaders across the International Women’s Forum’s membership, all with accomplished careers who hold an understanding of how success on the field can be translated into the business world. The mentors also possess firsthand understanding of how to transition into leadership roles effectively. In addition to the relationships the pairs will build with each other, mentees will be connected with a liaison from EY who will further help them connect with EY’s internal and external global business networks.
The matches include athletes such as Emily Hughes, Olympic figure skater and Harvard graduate who now works at Google on Google Fiber, the company’s ambitious ultra-high-speed Internet initiative (US). Emily has been paired with Whitney Mortimer, Chief Marketing Officer at IDEO (US) and fellow Harvard Alumni.
Others include Grace Jackson, Olympic medal winner for Jamaica who is currently a sports development director at The University of the West Indies. Grace was the first woman to win a silver medal for Jamaica in the Olympic Games and the first women from her region to run in four finals at the Olympics. She has been paired with Joi Gordon, CEO of Dress for Success, an inspirational not-for-profit organization that provides interview suits and offers career development opportunities to low-income women.
Beth Brooke-Marciniak, EY’s Global Vice Chair, Public Policy, says:
"There are precious few women role models in the upper echelons of leadership – just 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, and less than 1% of FTSE 250 CEO slots are held by women. Women need to be able to visualize the path forward to pursue these top positions – not only in the corporate world, but as entrepreneurs, government and not-for-profit leaders. This is why EY’s Women Athletes Business Network mentoring program is so powerful. By helping athletes understand how they can translate their unique skills gained through sport into impactful positions outside of sport, our IWF mentors can light the way and help shape these inspiring women into influential future leaders."
Marilyn Johnson, CEO International Women’s Forum, says: "The International Women’s Forum [IWF] is dedicated to building better global leadership and is proud to collaborate with EY to support and mentor the first-ever cohort of the Women Athletes Business Network (WABN). This strategic alliance will help guide and nurture these rising women leaders through an important professional transition. These talented women are transferring the same spirit of dedication and determination they successfully applied in athletic competitions to the next phase of their careers, and the IWF members will serve as phenomenal mentors and are committed to being a part of that journey."
Olympic champion and lead advisor to the EY Women Athletes Business Network, Donna de Varona says:
"Female athletes are often uniquely equipped to become impactful leaders. Connecting accomplished women athletes with the world’s most pre-eminent women outside the sporting community can only enhance the talent pool of those who are eager to lead and make a positive impact for women in business."
For the first time in Olympic history, all the participating countries at the London 2012 Olympic Games had female athletes with almost 45% female participation overall. The Women Athletes Business Network mentoring program can help this growing pool of women make successful transitions to the business world after sport.
At EY, we are determined to do our part to accelerate women’s progress in the workplace. In January we launched Women. Fast forward, which unifies into one global accelerator our numerous programs and initiatives, including WABN, designed to advance women so we can employ our collective knowledge, experiences and convening power to push ourselves further and to help accelerate the achievement of global gender parity.
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