GWPR To Celebrate IWD With Live Speed Mentoring Sessions

On Monday 8th March, over 100 senior PR professionals from across the world, most of whom are members, will be joining hands with leading global networking organisation, Global Women in PR (GWPR), to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) with live speed mentoring sessions.

From New York to Singapore, London to Moscow and Mexico to Mumbai, during this 24-hour period these leading PR professionals will be mentoring over 200 mid-career PR women in 30 minute sessions across 20 countries. They include some of the most senior women working in the global PR and Communications industry. 14 of the mentors and 38 of the mentees are from India.

All mentoring sessions will be cross border and will embrace the IWD 2021 theme #ChooseToChallenge. GWPR invited women with a minimum of five years’ experience in PR to participate as mentees through completing a form. Once accepted, the mentees were matched with an international mentor basis industry sector they represented and their areas of interest . Each mentor has been assigned two mentees.

PR is an industry which is two-thirds female. However, recent research reveals that men still hold 64 per cent of seats in the boardroom. The majority of PR professionals acknowledge that more needs to be done to ensure that there are more women in leadership positions. The 2020 GWPR survey* found that the most important initiative for helping break down barriers to the boardroom was to have more senior women as role models.

By creating this unique mentoring day, GWPR is aiming to inspire and support the next generation of PR women and encourage them to become leaders of the future.

GWPR International Chair, Cornelia Kunze, comments: “The response to this initiative has exceeded all our expectations. So many women working in senior roles in PR and Communications from all over the world have come forward to support us – it has been incredible. It clearly demonstrates that there is a real passion to re-dress the balance in leadership in the PR industry and we are now motivated to follow up this IWD mentoring activity with an ongoing international mentoring programme.”

The India Chapter of GWPR was launched in December, 2020.