The Art of Honoring Leadership Mentoring Program

2009-2010 Program Graduation Celebration, Photo by 3M

The Art of Honoring Leadership Mentoring Program is a unique opportunity that connects first generation, female, junior and senior college students of color with professional female organizational leaders of color.

Top companies such as 3M Company, HealthPartners, Wells Fargo Bank, Target Corporation and Travelers Insurance provide female leaders of colors.  This program is based on the school year and engages first generation female students of color from universities such as Augsburg College, Bethel University, Hamline University, Metropolitan State University, St. Catherine University, University of Minnesota, and Carlson School of Management.

The purpose of the Art of Honoring Leadership mentoring program is to provide students with an opportunity to honor themselves by becoming better prepared to successfully enter the work world.  By working with a variety of organizational leaders to build relationships across cultures, students will learn and develop new professional skills to expand their leadership capabilities and leave with the support, contacts, connections and strategies to seek and develop an inspiring and life-giving career. 

1. Learn from organizational leaders what it’s like to be a leader, the skills and techniques necessary to navigate at work, and ways to present and promote oneself.
2. Meet and learn from women of diverse cultures, life experiences, and careers to broaden their options and choices as they go through college and enter the job market.
3. Be equipped to take a stronger leadership role in their lives by honoring themselves and others through learning and practicing the six HWW operating principles.
4. Complete the program prepared with the skills, knowledge, and powerful network of supporters and mentors to develop an inspiring and life-giving career.
5. Gain skills in communication, leadership styles, conflict resolution, promoting themselves, negotiation, financial management, presentation, projecting your image, critical thinking, resume writing, and ways to navigate politics in diverse situations.

HWW has received great reviews from this program. The mentors report they have gained as much or more as the mentees for their professional development and have taken the learning back to their organizational teams.  Several students have gotten incredible jobs, due to their involvement with mentors in this program.  We received great results from the 2009-2010 program and the 2010-2011 program.

Sample results from 2010-2011:

Understand different cultures (i.e. organizational, ethnic, generational, level, class):

     Mentors:     71% improved

     Mentees:    83% improved

Understands leadership styles including my own:   

     Mentors:     79% improved

     Mentees:  100% improved

Resolves differences and conflicts:

     Mentors:     50% improved

     Mentees:    83% improved          

Click here to see all results from the 2010-2011 program and click here to see the results from the 2009-2010 program.