Mentoring excellence. A commitment to the talent of the future
Spanish companies are concerned about the shortage of STEM talent leaving higher education institutions. They are also aware that finding talent in these areas and retaining it is essential to improve their productivity rates and profit and loss accounts.
Since the Women and Engineering Project of the Royal Academy of Engineering, we are working together with many companies to increase the number of young people who choose to pursue this type of study, focusing on women and helping these companies to have direct access to talent leaving universities.
The value of mentorship programs
One of the most successful programs to identify and retain talent is the excellent mentoring programe. A program that has proven to be a great catalyst for the learning process both for mentors and mentors and for mentors. The trusted environment that creates allows us to share experiences, opinions, questions, challenges and find answers that allow us to grow and move forward together.
Perhaps the first mentoring school was the ‘salons’ that emerged in Europe in the 18th century, especially in France. Those salons, were the territory of women, Les Saloniers, such as Madame de Longueville, Marquesa de Sablé, Madame de Sévigné or Madame de la Fayete. All of them were ladies who belonged to the high society of that time. These rooms represented a new learning space, shared for the first time by men and women on equal terms. In those lounges were, among others, Montesquieu, Moliere or Voltaire.
We are about to start the seventh edition of this program and, since the first, we have conceived this initiative as a tool to boost talent and generate and share knowledge. First, we cannot share knowledge if we do not generate it first and we cannot generate it if we do not have enough talent to do so. Talent and knowledge are the foundation of human progress.
Thanks to universities for supporting your students beyond the classrooms, by scholarship for these women and thus giving them the opportunity to train in this program. Thanks to businesses, especially AMETIC partners, to help us finance it and, above all, to gain from excellent mentors and mentors.
With this program, Project M -I makes a clear commitment to the talent that will shape the future, especially for women. It is time for women to lead the inevitable change that the world needs.
March 2023
PHD. Sara Gómez Martín
Director of the Women and Engineering Project
Royal Spanish Engineering Academy