30th Anniversary Celebration series | Melanie Barker — First Director of PWI Mentoring Programme
Celebrating the PWI 30th anniversary, we talked to Melanie about how and why the mentoring program was launched and what was her role.
Magda Kufrej: Melanie, thank you for meeting me to talk about your role in setting up the mentoring program at PWI. But first, tell us how did your adventure with PWI start?
Melanie Barker: I am from the UK and my background is primarily in finance. My husband already worked in Brussels, so when we decided to start a family, I joined him. For the first couple of years, I took a career break and focused on the kids. When they got a bit older, I went back to work, first part-time, then full-time as a lecturer and office manager for the Open University and then as a financial advisor. That’s around that time that I first joined PWI. What a pleasant, supportive, enjoyable diverse group of women, all coming from different professions, all looking for support and genuinely offering friendship and openness. I just loved it, so, since I’m a doer, I quite quickly got involved as a volunteer.
Magda Kufrej: How was the PWI mentoring program born?
Melanie Barker: At that time, in the early 2010s, mentoring was being developed in other PWN offices in Europe. Primary, we learnt about it through a wonderful lady, Alessandra Zocca, a PWI Advisory Board Member, who had good connections with the PWN office in Milan. She was the one convincing us that we need to develop a mentoring program, that it was something important in the next step in supporting women’s development. So, it was her who was the catalyst and I stepped forward and said “I would love to do it”.
Magda Kufrej: What were your first steps?
Melanie Barker: Alessandra mentored me in setting the program up, the bureaucracy, creating all the paperwork, thinking about the system, how you support it all, etc. We talked to other PWN offices that had already experimented with mentoring. It was a very inspiring process. Alessandra was able to give me great advice, she’s very experienced, but also able to let me work things through myself. She understood that PWI should be a safe place where people can explore and push their abilities. That’s what we wanted to achieve with the mentoring program, and that’s also what I was experiencing myself in the process.
For me, launching the program was also an exploration. Mentoring is now very common in the vocabulary, it’s so accepted and understood as an essential part of professional development, whereas 10–15 years ago, it was not so much. There was a lot of learning to do to understand what it was and how we could best use it.
Magda Kufrej: How have the PWI mentoring program evolved?
Melanie Barker: I’ve seen it change so much from how it was at the beginning! We started in a very structured way and then learnt and figured it out on the go. Getting feedback was very useful. For example, at the beginning, we were matching mentors and mentees ourselves, based on what they told us. But at some point, we realized it was more about enthusiasm, just creating a space where people can meet, and working from the background. Sowe tried a speed newtoerking approach to the matching process. We gave the women participating in the program 5 minutes to talk to different people and let them identify their own mentorship partners. So, we went from trying to structure everything to providing more flexibility. It worked.
Magda Kufrej: What benefits can mentoring bring?
Melanie Barker: Mentoring is an active participatory process driven by a mentee who’s looking to gain experience. It’s enormously important because it can help women in one big respect: confidence. As I get older, I see that one big issue that sometimes affects women more than men is self-confidence. Often the places where you get in life have not necessarily so much to do with your abilities and competences, but with how confident you are. Mentoring can be enormously helpful in this context. It’s a one-to-one relationship, in a safe space, so that the mentees can learn from expertise in particular areas and mentors can have the confidence to openly share their experiences.
Magda Kufrej: How would you compare PWI mentoring program to what companies offer internally?
Melanie Barker: I think it’s great that companies are stepping out with mentoring programs, but it might not always work best. Mentoring is based on trustso, if there are any issues in the company structure, these may be difficult to talk about with people from the same organization. PWI’s memtoring program allows a mentoring relationship outside of the mentees company. Also, people don’t necessarily want to know how to progress in the profession or industry they already know, but maybe want to learn a lot of other things that are not exactly focused on your job but can enhance what you do. Maybe you are an IT person, but want to learn about design, or managing meetings, or something else outside of your expertise. This is where PWI really adds something to established in-house mentoring programs. It’s cross-industry and cross-culture, which is hugely valuable. There is also something about the ethos within PWI that it so nurturing. At PWI everyone is so genuinly nice and supportive and that really helps the mentoring process.
More about Melanie
Melanie has considerable professional experience in financial services; in stockbroking, the marine insurance industry and subsequently as a regulated financial planner in Belgium and the UK. Her legal background underscores her drive to ensure fairness, clarity and honesty in all her dealings. She has a passion for facilitating personal growth and education demonstrated through involvement with mentoring programmes and previously as an associate lecturer with the Open University.
What do others say about the PWI mentoring Programme?
“Mentees tell us that the biggest added value is the fact that this program is independent from their workplaces. As a result they feel more free to discuss challenges and difficulties, and the perspective of an outsider is often refreshing. Mentors tell us how rewarding it feels to be helping another woman advance her career. Not only that: they feel they grow themselves as leaders.”
Jessica J.J. Lutz, current PWI Mentoring Programme Co-Director
