Transforming the Future: Women Mentoring Women in the Workplace

By F. John Bray, the United States Consul General in Nigeria

I am very pleased that you could take time away from your work to join us for this introduction to structured mentoring.

Mentoring is not new and I would guess that many of you have either been mentored or have served as mentors.

I have been both a mentee and mentor during my time in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Department of State.

Both roles have been meaningful to me……

The program of structured mentoring,to whichPublic Affairs Officer Darcy Zotter will introduce you, was created by the Department of State’s Human Resource bureau to address a number of challenges.

Like many of you at your companies the Department of State was looking for a way to retain its best employees and develop future leaders.

We wanted to connect our rising stars with leaders, top performers, and others.

We recognized that we needed to take steps to ensure that our leadership was both ethnically and gender diverse.

And equally important we wanted to provide a mechanism for knowledge sharing between older and younger employees.

The starting point for addressing these issues was a structured mentoring program.

The U.S. Department of State is committed to advocating for and including women in the workplace both in the United States and abroad.

The first female diplomat was hired in the 1920s but she had to resign when she married.

The “marriage rule” was not abolished until the late 1970s.

When I joined the Department the State Department workforce was 27 percent, most of these people doing clerical work.

It is now 40 percent, but still not the 50 percent we are committed to achieving.

The number of female diplomats has remained steady at 30 percent for the past decade.

The percentage of senior positions held by women at the State Department is at an all-time high – 30 percent.

Through structured mentoring programs run by Executive Women at State and our Human Resources bureau we are working to increase the number of women in line with our goal of having a workforce that reflects the makeup of U.S. society.

To support women internationally, we established the office of Global Women’s affairs in 1995.

We have identified assisting women to achieve senior positions in both the private and public sector as a priority.

One of the many programs that we have includes the Global Women’s Mentoring program.

I know that a number of Nigerian women have participated in this program, a collaboration between Fortune and the Department of State, as well as TechWomen and other programs.

Darcy is well-qualified to share this mentoring program with you. She was elected to the board of the Executive Woman at State where she actively participated in mentoring women. Additionally she was selected by the Director General of the Department of State to lead training for the Human Resources department’s 600 employees on structured mentoring for everyone.

Thank you for coming and I hope that you find the training informative and useful.