G15 Women Mentorship Brunch

Last week, the G15 Women’s Mentorship Network held a networking brunch for this year’s mentee cohort.

The session, attended by over 50 aspiring leaders in housing and development, was hosted at L&Q’s office by the Network’s founder Vicky Savage – Executive Director for Development and Sales at L&Q and former Chair of the G15 Development Group.

Outside of the 1-2-1 mentoring sessions, which form the essence of the programme, the G15 Women Mentorship Network also organises stand-alone networking and career development events specifically for mentees, directed at one particular aspect of their professional lives.

One such issue we are tackling with this sessions is one that mentors have encountered throughout their career, and particularly with the mentees they’ve helped guide along the years. The issue of finding one’s ‘voice’.

This can mean a number of things – finding and exhibiting the confidence to present, to manage people, or to get things done in your day-to-day roles; finding a particular style (or presenting, managing, of getting things done), as well as the ability to build one’s own persona professionally.

In a male-dominated sector, such as housing and development, finding your voice as a woman is a particularly difficult balance act.

To address this, the event brought forward a number of extraordinary women – both in and outside the G15 – to talk about their own experience of finding their own voice and style; what has worked and what hasn’t worked for them and guide mentees through these challenges.

Mentees heard from:

• Andrea Palmer – Head of LLR, L&Q
• Elena Brodetsky – Delivery Director, North Counties, Peabody
• Wendy Hegarty – Partner, Red Loft

The G15 Women’s Mentoring Network was founded in 2019 by then Chair of the G15 Development Directors Group, Vicky Savage (L&Q) to support women in the early stages of their development careers across the G15 members. The programme has grown exponentially since then, and we now have over 100 mentors and mentees across all G15 members actively participating.

Female colleagues in the Development Group across all G15 members have been invited to join the programme, either as a mentor or a mentee. Participants are matched with women at Director or Head of Service level across the G15, to provide guidance and career advice to aspiring leaders.