On Friday Oct. 7 the Women’s Mentorship Program launched its kick-off event, marking the beginning of the fourth year of the program. Under the current leadership of seniors Arame Dieng and Nicoleta Nichifor and junior Olga Magneeva — three former mentees — the program has a larger number of participants than in the previous years. This year the program has 40 mentors and 50 mentees. The current mentors come from a diversity of academic and professional backgrounds, including fields such as education, consulting, law and health.

Women’s Mentorship Program is a student-led initiative, launched in October 2013 by NYU Abu Dhabi alumna Nicole Lopez Del Carril. An initiative of the Women’s Leadership Network SIG, the program seeks to provide opportunities for female students at NYUAD to connect and engage with outstanding female professionals for career and academic guidance. The program emphasizes the effectiveness of one-on-one mentoring as means of building supportive networks for students. The program has been especially useful in helping students transition from being students to being employees.

Around 60 people attended the kick-off event on Oct. 14. The event started with a welcome note from Dieng, who then gave the floor to alumna Olivia Bergen. Bergen, who co-founded the WLN, spoke about her experience of establishing the SIG, and her joy at witnessing the consistent growth of the program since its inception. She was followed by Magneeva, who spoke about the long-lasting impact of her mentor on her life. Finally, the keynote speaker, a helicopter pilot, shared valuable insights from her 16-year career, and spoke of the challenges she faced while trying to fulfill her dream of working in the aviation industry.

Unlike previous kick-off events, this year’s event placed an additional emphasis on structure and expectations, including a presentation of expectations for both mentors and mentees delivered by Nichifor. Although mentorship relationships in previous years have been flexible, with mentors and mentees in charge of setting up meetings themselves, this year the program aims at providing additional workshops and talks centered on professional-oriented topics, in the hopes of strengthening connections between participants.

At the event, mentors and mentees met for the first time. In the months to come, participants will have the chance to meet regularly, exchange ideas and motivate and empower each other.