Sev­en­ty-Five women from var­i­ous pro­fes­sion­al back­grounds have reg­is­tered for the 6th An­nu­al Women in Lead­er­ship Men­tor­ship Pro­gramme (WILMP) host­ed by AM­CHAM T&T, in part­ner­ship with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

At the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Sep­tem­ber 4, Ni­rad Tewarie, CEO of AM­CHAM T&T said this was the high­est in­take of mentees in a sin­gle year since the pro­gramme was orig­i­nal­ly con­cep­tu­alised in 2017 to pro­vide fe­male pro­fes­sion­als in the pri­vate sec­tor with ex­pert men­tors aligned to their ca­reer goals.

In de­liv­er­ing the open­ing re­marks, Tewarie said gen­der in­equal­i­ty is one of the big is­sues that AM­CHAM T&T feels strong­ly about giv­en the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s es­tab­lished track record of hav­ing se­cured gen­der par­i­ty on the board, the ap­point­ment of two suc­ces­sive fe­male pres­i­dents pri­or to the cur­rent pres­i­dent, and the host­ing of the an­nu­al Women’s Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence which will be cel­e­brat­ing its 10th an­niver­sary in 2024.

Al­so, Sharon Christo­pher who is a lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment coach and an at­tor­ney-at-law de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress and praised the pro­gramme for its high in­take of women as mentees and men­tors. “I am so glad to see so many women have stepped for­ward. I know there are male men­tors, but so many women have stepped for­ward and are in a po­si­tion where they could men­tor oth­ers,” Christo­pher said.

“There’s this state­ment that is said so glibly that women nev­er help women. But what we are see­ing to­day re­al­ly puts a lie to that (state­ment).”

Christo­pher said that when she first start­ed her ca­reer, all her men­tors were male be­cause “at the top lev­els whether in bank­ing, fi­nance, law, in the cor­po­rate world, it was con­trolled by men so that my men­tors were all male. Hav­ing said that, they were very good men­tors.”

The Women in Lead­er­ship Men­tor­ship Pro­gramme will run from Sep­tem­ber 2023 through Feb­ru­ary 2024 and will pro­vide men­tor­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties to women across all sec­tors and in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing sci­ence and math­e­mat­ics, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing and eco­nom­ics, oc­cu­pa­tion­al health and safe­ty etc.