WomenWay, formerly known as the Young Female Entrepreneurs & Executives Association, was founded in 2009 to support female executives, board candidates and entrepreneurs to reach professional and personal development goals. Its mentoring program with experienced female and male mentors is particularly suitable for female startup founders. The association changed its name, revamped its website and organizes the first event in Western Switzerland in June.
WomenWay is an association for Women in leadership positions, women entrepreneurs, female board members and board candidates. With more than 800 active members, the association has a database of over 3‘000 business women, 1'600 newsletter subscribers and is connected to more than 10‘000 business women on a national and international level through social networks.
The core of WomenWay is a mentoring programme. Through a female or male mentor, qualified women have access to circles previously closed to them – they receive firsthand know-how, tailored to their specific needs and their current position – and they gain recognition in the places where decisions are made. In addition mentees can reach personal development goals more quickly.
One of its main objective is to support women entrepreneurs and start-ups through connecting them with experienced female and male mentors. The association is well connected to the start-up scene and can leverage its network to Swiss and foreign venture capitalists (VCs). And WomenWay is constantly looking for female founders for articles that will distributed through the extensive network. A good chance for start-ups to gain more visibility.
The mentoring program is very flexible. Mentors and mentees decide how the want to collaborate. Mentors have the option of donating their time pro bono (without charge), or charging a mentor fee per hour or per mentoring. This fee is payed by the mentee.
The first step for a female entrepreneur interested in the mentoring program is to contact WomenWay. WomenWay offers two ways for initiating a mentoring: Mentees can search the mentor directory on the website for a suitable mentor and directly send a request for a mentoring or Mentees can receive a proposal for a mentor from WomenWay based on their mentee profile. Specifically, a shortlist of three mentors will be presented who fit the profile and goals of the mentee. Both requires the prior registration of the mentee on the website and the creation of a mentee profile and the filling of mentoring key data including the requirements and objectives as mentee
Apart from the mentoring program WomenWay publishes information about female role models, sharing their success story and learnings and organizes events. The next event of WomenWay is the first in Western Switzerland. On 20 June Jennifer Blanke, Chief Economist at the World Economic Forum, shares her insights into sustainable economic growth based on equality and inclusivity at WomenWay. The event responds to a clear need – it is already sold out.
A list with more events of WomenWay and similar organization can be found on the WomenWay website.
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