At our Women’s Roundtable event held on the 20th of July 2023, we announced the launch of the New Faces New Voices Mentorship Programme. Following this, we hosted a breakfast meeting to officially introduce members of the first cohort to one another and bring mentees together with their future mentors.
The objectives of the mentorship programme are to facilitate the connection between knowledge aspirants (mentees) and knowledge holders (mentors). By linking aspirants to mentors, the hope is that mentees will be aided in navigating their careers and building confidence that will help them overcome obstacles and challenges that prevent them from attaining leadership positions within the financial sector. The role of NFNV in this programme will be to identify mentees and match them with mentors who have been selected from our database, profile booklets and referrals.
The 2022 Women in Finance Annual Database Survey reflected only 1.9% board members are women in the financial sector, 5.8% as Managing Directors or Chief Executive Officers, 9.5% as heads of departments and 30.5% in middle management. Mentorship alongside the networking, leadership training and coaching are proposals to increase the number of women in key decision-making positions in the financial sector.
The breakfast meeting was both insightful and inspiring. Participants shared their expectations from the programme, as well as personal stories and experiences that have brought them to seek and to give mentorship. Latifa Kassim, Nedbank Head of Treasury, spoke on the importance of creating safe spaces such as this where women in positions of leadership are able to uplift others. She has come to the realisation that as women working in male dominated spaces we often try to deny our femininity, but she believes in using her femininity as a tool to help others. Initiatives such as this programme are the very space in which this sentiment can be reinforced amongst other women.
We were also very honoured to have Thembe Khumalo as our guest speaker, presenting on the topic of Personal Branding. In her talk she highlighted to us the importance of being able to build and maintain a positive personal image that is able to exist outside of the corporate identity. As women, we often allow our individuality to be erased as we fight to tick all the boxes that are required of us to fill a particular role or be accepted within certain spaces.
You can not have believability and credibility without visibility (your personal brand).
We look forward to embarking on this journey with our first cohort and future cohorts as we continue to grow the number and visibility of African women in leadership and decision-making positions in the financial sector.
