Thank you for joining this session. The webinar is being recorded, and the chat has been enabled for the discussion. So I thank you for coming and joining me.I'm going to give everyone a moment as I see a few participants coming in, and we will start in Just a few minutes. Hopefully, everyone is having a wonderful time. At the conference, feel free to grab yourself a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, spending on what time of the day it is where you are. Good morning. Grab more coffee, Christine, whatever it is that you need. Okay. For about 2 minutes or so. Let's jump in and get started. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining this session. I am more than excited to present this topic, leveraging sponsors and empowerment to create effective career strategies for your career advancement.

The chat has been enabled, so I will be able to see some of your questions. I see that some folks are raising hands. So I will stop periodically throughout the discussion to address some of those. But without further ado, let's dive in. My presentation together here. So I'm gonna give you a, what, an introduction on who I am. My name is Doctor Diana B Ellen. I am a cybersecurity subject matter expert in reader. I have been in the field for, I don't wanna date myself too much, but over 15 years, And I have worked for very large organizations, very small organizations. I'm based out of the Washington, DC area in the United States. And I'm really passionate about cyber and passionate about security. But another passion of mine is growth and development of female leaders and our female cybersecurity professionals.

And so the wonderful thing that I went and did was completed a doctorate focused on organizational leadership. And my dissertation focused on the effective career strategies of sponsorship and how it aligns to empowerment for women in tech fields. So while this this seminar is primarily focused on that, we will also be able to provide information for allies, for supporters, and for advocates. Part of the things that we need to also understand as women in tech is If you understand where you're going and what you want to accomplish and are able to effectively name it then you will be able to ask for the support that you need and or better provide support to others.

So I also am a wife. I have 2 beautiful girls that are 5 and roughly about a year and a half, and I am just a regular mom that is a professional. So that is passionate about the subject. I see a few hands. Let me pause and see if there are some questions in the chat. Not sure if participants can unmute. So if you can feel free. It seems like Tia Dora has a question. Let me unmute

you. Yes, Theodore. K. Stephanie

Quintella, do you have a question before we get started?

K.

So let's dive right in.

Here's what we will talk about today. As mentioned in the description,

I will highlight an illustration of the different types of career support. We will also have a discussion And ideally in the chat, again, this is supposed to I would love for this to be an interactive session on the constructive empowerment. I'll give you a few examples of empowerment components and then empowerment robers. I'll share some excerpts from my research and dissertation as well as some real life examples as a woman in tech. Some of these things that I'm able to highlight that I was able to support with the research, I've experienced myself or helped other women in tech overcome. And finally, we will talk about some tactical steps.

I have some takeaways for you and some tools that you can use to leverage and highlight your career support, where you are now, where you would like to be, and how to continue to evolve that as you. Are growing in your career. And then as usual, we'll have questions and answers.

So let's dive right in. So there

are multiple types of career support. As you can see on the screen, we have advisors, we have coaches, we have mentors, we have sponsors, And so I'm going to ask, take an opportunity to use your reactions, and how many people know the difference between these four constructs just go on ahead, raise your hand, give some type of emoji, some type of indicator, and I should be able to see it.

Who knows the difference between advisors, coaches, mentors, and sponsors?

Go ahead and raise your hand with your, emojis. Yep.

I see a few hands going up. Wonderful. Wonderful. So some do, some don't So I will definitely take an opportunity to explain the difference. So advisors, advisors can fall into many categories. Some of them are inside of your organization. Some of them can be outside of your organization. These are people that you go to for advice to bounce ideas off of, to, obtain their opinion and see what they think about a situation, perhaps they've been in it perhaps that they're elsewhere, and they're in a similar field. So think about it. Whatever organization where you work and you have a friend, a colleague, a classmate, And you say, what are your what are your thoughts on this? I'm encountering this situation. I'm interested in this type of role. What did you do to obtain your last position? That's where you go to advisors. They don't necessarily have to be at a specific rank or level, but they do provide input and advice for you in your career.

And you support them, you support them as well, and you value their opinion. When you start start to think about, excuse me, when you start to think about coaches, coaches fall into a range of helping you develop a skill set. So or helping you achieve a goal. So you have someone coaching you on your presentation skills. You might it also could be a colleague. It could be a friend. And I would say, you know what? Stephanie does a really great job of presenting. She is amazing. I would love to get some coaching from her. Nikki. Amazing. I really want to understand how you do your client presentations or how you prepare these. Can you give me some coaching and some tips on that? A lot of times, that's where you advocate, and that's where you get coaches that can help you advocate. And so coaches can be paid. Coaches cannot be paid.

And they can help you as you develop certain acumen in your career. Now we get to some meat and potatoes. We have mentors. Mentors are they can run the gamut. They can be peers. They're typically people that are more experienced than you in an organization and they provide you advice, input, guidance, sometimes emotional support. There are different roles for mentors. And they're different that the responsibilities for mentors can be deep and can be vast. I'll take an opportunity. How many of you in this discussion right now have had a mentor or currently have a mentor. Go ahead and raise your hand in the chat.

I see it going. I see it going. You've had a mentor or have been

a mentor where someone has said, you be

my mentor? How many of

you have had that raise your hand in the chat as well? Yep. The numbers are going up. K. I'll ask another question. How many of those who've asked you to

be their mentor are women? How many women have approached you asking you to be

a mentor?

Yes. The numbers are going as well. K. Fantastic. So

my next question will be how many of you in the part in the in the session have sponsors. Raise your hand. We have a few. How many of you have sponsors?

Okay. So very low number of those responses.

And so I'm not surprised by that statistic and that and just in this room, there are about 20 a little bit over twenty people here today. One real challenge that I noticed in real life and in research and academia is that women are over mentored and under sponsored. Especially intact, especially in stem related fields. Women are over mentored and under sponsored. And there are some reasons for that. Mentorship requires a lot on the participant, on the mentee and the participant in the mentor relationship versus the person giving. When you start to talk about sponsorships, sponsorship involves someone who's typically at least 2 levels higher than you. They have political capital. They have influence. They are in rooms where you are not.

And so some of the things that are important when it comes to having a sponsor is understanding the seats that they sit in and the rooms that they're present in. Sometime and what that looks like is, sponsors could be the ones that are present in the performance, in the room of your performance is being discussed. When opportunities are being handed out, that's where sponsors come into play. In some organizations, they may call them table founders. Who is the person that's going to bring your name into that room and say, Hey, why why have we not considered Nikki? Why have we not considered Stephanie? Why have we not considered Diana for these different roles? And so as you think about who is in your network, who has influence, who has power, and it's not always the highest person in the organization, the CEO, or someone on the board.

Sponsors, they can be if you are entry level, they can be a manager They can be a senior manager, and you continue to evolve sponsor relationships as you grow in your career. And so it's important to understand the difference in the roles and what sponsors do versus what mentors do. When you understand that, you will be empowered to act for something different to be a more effective career supporter and to be able to grow in your career exponentially. So there's some research that shows that mentorship sponsorship, there are critical and crucial factors to women regardless of of race and gen regardless of race and background, but specifically women of color, women of marginalized backgrounds. Mentorship and sponsorship are critical to advancing and getting those visible challenging tactical, role appropriate opportunities. The reason being is that a lot of times we need social capital, which is access to information and to people so that we can get those opportunities to show our stuff to deliver and then having the support while we are there.

So I'll pause there, take a look at the chat, and see a few questions coming in. I want to we've saw some folks have had informal mentors. Yes. So if you have questions, you can definitely post for me, if you have comments you want, you can you should be able to share them with everyone in the chat as well. And so mentorship sponsorship. It's great to have advisors. It's great to have coaches. And I put this in a linear fashion with a great based on impact so that you can see from a visual perspective how that impacts and can impact your career and change your career. But let's delve a little bit deeper. Understanding sponsorship versus mentorship. So let's say I I I highlighted it a little bit differently, And but I want you to be able to see it and also see it in the research.

So you won't say Diana is coming here, and Doctor Allen is presenting her own suggestions and ideas. These are the behaviors and the key actions of what mentors versus sponsors do. I should be able to see, and you can definitely raise your hand if you agree. If you seen some of these behaviors. You have a mentor who is going. They have a genuine interest. They care about your well-being. They care about your your your work product. They are familiar with the type of work that you do. They encourage you. They tell you to keep your head up. You can do it. They're cheering you on, they're sometimes introducing you to people. Those are the typical things that mentors do. Okay. Yes or yes. I will I will already imagine that I can see your head nodding. The other thing is sponsors. Sponsors are a little bit more rare.

And sponsors have a different impact. Sponsor are using their political capital to help you grow in advance. Why do they wanna do that? Because they see something in you, it is beneficial for leaders to continue to build a pipeline, build followership, and grow new talent. And then the other thing is they help you get visibility because they, by by virtue of role, have more access and have greater impact based off of where they sit within the organization. Now sponsors are typically a part of your organization. So you can have sponsors that may be somewhere else, and then they may say, hey. Hey. Come on over to my team, come on over to my company. And then in that in that instance, they can be a sponsor for you there. So that is a key differentiator. So, we have a couple of a couple more questions, and I will definitely touch on that.

The other thing is that sponsors have more social capital. So what is social capital? Social capital is act is just connecting in different circles. And so that was also a part of the research that I have. I didn't delve into it

too much here, but What do

you think about a a key example for me to explain social capital is people as similarly and gravitate to people with similarities. So you'll see that in the workplace evolve like, my daughter played soccer, and I'll pick Stephanie's child's play soccer. And we meet on the soccer field or we are sharing soccer stories or whatever this whatever the commonality is. We go to the same church. We go to the same synagogue. We we went to the same undergrad. We worked on similar projects. I'm familiar with their work. That's how your social capital starts to build. And the key and the the Bear foundation of social capital is trust. And so I'm going to bring you in, and I'm gonna introduce you to my friends and my friends trust me because they know me We we are, we've worked together.

We have similar backgrounds. We've built trust. And so when I bring you in and I introduce you and I say This is a solid person. They trust my opinion, and they're they're in starts to expand your network. So sometimes when we start to look at stem related fields that are heavily male and, in some instances, white male dominated We don't have a lot of similarities on the outside with those individuals. So it's going to take

a little bit of a reach.

It's going to take a little bit of a connection to bridge those gaps and for them to share their social capital with you. So hopefully that gives some insight. And, also, you don't the basis of a sponsor relationship and finding a sponsor is based on performance. So you're going to find your best sponsor or the greatest opportunity for a sponsor when you are a strong performer. You're you're doing well in your in with your attack with your activities. You're doing well at work. You're knocking it out of the park. No one is going to expend their social capital and their influence. If you're underperforming, right, because that causes them to lose trust. That causes them to lose credibility. And so We definitely wanna make sure that you're a strong performer. You're knocking it out of the park at this session and this seminar.

I know that that's absolutely the case here. But that's definitely something that came out through the research, and that's also come out in my understanding just in general of working in the field.

I will get to some questions in a moment, but I wanna highlight empowerment. Empowerment.

This is the key. This is the secret sauce to understanding what we need in from a work perspective. There are 2 pillars, as you can see here, in terms of empowerment for careers. You have psychological empowerment, and you're going to have structural empowerment. So I will focus. I will highlight psychological empowerment and explain the correlation between the 2, and then we'll focus a bit more on structural empowerment.

So Psychological empowerment has more to

do with the individual. It has to do with you. It has to do with how you feel about the work, how you feel about your confidence, how confident you feel in a role, how determined you are to do well, and your desire to have an impact. We wanna do meaningful work that moves the needle that helps drive profits, that helps customers with adoption, that helps patients if you work in certain fields that engineers amazing products. Those are the types of things that we want to do. So all of that boosts our confidence. Makes us feel like the bosses that we are and we're doing amazing. How do we get there? The way that we get there is through structural empowerment. So I'm gonna come back in a second and ask you to raise your hands. When I explained to you some examples of empowerment Roberts.

So structural empowerment, which a sponsor mentor, manager can help influence in the workplace access to opportunities. Do you have access to stretch assignments? Are you growing? Do you have training opportunities, information exchange? Do you have the information that you need? Do you have an understanding? Do you have support Do you have someone that you can go to and talk to? Are you left to your own devices? And then do you have the resources so that you can get the job done? So those are all things that are within the control of individuals that are in the workplace.

Excuse me. I had to

clear my throat. So let me give an example of empowerment robbers. As I go through this list, feel free to raise your hand or put it in the chat if you've seen, heard, or experienced these things. You're working in a job or you're working in a role and you don't get stretch opportunities. It gets stale. It gets boring. You're doing the same thing. You get an opportunity, and I let me let me open the chat here so I can see the part see the hands that that go up. How many of you have seen that? How many of you have seen or experienced that where some people get promoted, some people get opportunities, others don't. You're like, ah, they are working. Everybody's working. They're doing great. What happened? Why is this person getting put in certain positions and not others? Or you get there. Yep.

I see hands going up. It's probably gonna be all

of the hands that go up. How many of

you have seen or gotten a role and you're missing information? Or you get a promotion or you get a role and someone is gives you 3 pieces to a four piece puzzle or a five piece puzzle. I've experienced that. I've experienced that a few times, and someone said, well, I expected you to ask for what you were missing. How would I know what I was missing? If you have the information, why wouldn't you share it? What about resources? How many of you, and I'll I'll put everybody's hands down? How many of you have experienced the situation where project or situation is failing, and they'll call you in to come and save the day. And the project has been failing for some amount of time or struggling, and now you come in and you have a shorter amount of time.

I see the I see the hands going up. You have a shorter amount of time than the people who had it in the first place that weren't doing that well. So they might have had it for 6 months or 18 months, and now you come in and you have 6 months. Or you have 4 weeks to make magic happen. Those things have happened. Those are examples of empowerment Roberts. And so where men where sponsors come into play is sponsors. You have the conversation with that person. You say, listen. I can absolutely come in and do this do this job. But I don't have enough staff. This is meant for six people, and I have 2. And I am one of the 2. Right? I if you count me, I'm 3.

So we expect me to lead the project, execute on the project, and I'm short staffed. And I have less people or less fine than my counterpart had. And so help me, and that's where your sponsor and your mentors can start to leverage the network. To to shield you and to give you the top cover and to give you the support that you need so that you can be successful. So those are some examples, real life, real time. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I should have put it in the description. We're gonna have those real discussion of what we encounter

in the workplace as women in STEM. So this

is an excerpt of my, from my research. This is hot off the press, fresh, never been seen by, except by the folks who were able to see my defense. And when I interviewed my participants, which worked high ranking women in STEM that was that was a part of my criteria to identify what are effective behaviors behaviors that your mentors and your sponsors did to help promote empowerment? What did they do? Because some people can say I wanna be a mentor, and I wanna be a sponsor, and they're not that good. Or they're not doing what you need for where you're trying to go. And so how do you understand the difference and how do you know how they're effective versus not? So there's gonna be some overlap here. You can see in the word cloud, Excuse me. That sponsors, mentors, they listen. They build. They strategize dies, they introduce, they promote you. It's a little bit different.

But one thing that you want to note here is that mentorship It's kind of passive in a way in terms of directing towards your career. They'll motivate you. They'll ideate with you. They'll support you. They'll suggest they'll They'll encourage. They'll strategize with you. They can coach you a little bit. Those are the things that mentors do. And sometimes you can get all that's all you need is that little push to help you get there. But when you have sponsors, they open doors. They empower. They acknowledge you. They promote you. They publicly protect you. And so all of those behaviors, which are effective, are action words. They're option oriented. And so they are focused on helping you gain visibility, helping you gain access, helping you to grow and expand in your role. And so Sponsorship is very active. It's very engaged on behalf of the of the sponsor, not solely on the protege as the protege in the sponsor relationship. It is your responsibility to perform.

You are knocking it out of the park. You are doing well, and they're giving you room to fail, to pivot, they're giving you the support, but that is your responsibility as a protege in a sponsor relationship is to do well from a perform

standpoint. Let me take a look at the chat.

I see some some dialogues and questions. Okay. Let's see. I see a few things a few notes. Okay. Yes. I will talk about how to find a sponsor. How do you find someone to sponsor you? So I did mention that. It starts with,

it starts with performance. So we're gonna delve into it. We're gonna continue to go. So I know you're wondering, and I

see it in the chat already. Do I find a sponsor? How do I get empowered? What do I do? Cause I've explained to you, it's crucial. And, honestly, I'll give you another statistic as there are catalysts mentioned that it's been in McKinsey did a few studies, there is a greater push for stem for women and stem related positions. Oh, that was it's gonna be roughly about 60% of the workforce. In just a few years, but and that will help lessen the wage gap. This is globally, not just in a particular country. And so the challenge there is that many of the women in stem wind up being on the edges and the margins of the role versus in the core components and the core leadership portions of the role, and that's in senior leadership and growth. And so how that impacts companies, and that's what I put I that's what I mentioned in my dissertation is that that lack of diversity and in your leadership chain and your leadership team leads to reduce profits and margins because women make up over 51% of the population.

We're not in we're not in the minority of that person, and that point of view. But we have so many different roles in society that we need to be taken into consideration our viewpoint matters. When you're talking about requirements gathering when you are looking at how to manage households. A lot of times, there are multiple thoughts that come into play that women naturally aren't inclined to. There is research that supports greater retention, employee retention, and promotion rates when women are highly visible in senior leadership ranks. So if you want to grow and have greater profits and greater margins, and really understand your customer base, having women in critical roles, not just sitting there as a token or a spokesperson, but actually being able to have power and influence and empowerment, then companies have to really focus on how to bridge that gap.

And so let's talk a little bit about how you get in sponsored and how you can get empowered. Start with your current network. I'm going to drop this in the chat. This is my, nugget for you.

And

This is the personal empowerment plan. Don't rush to it yet. I have pictures for you because I want to explain to you what you're going to see and what you're going to do. This example, you're going to start with your current network. Let's determine what you have right now and where you are. And so you're going to see a note for me explaining to you what to do, but the first thing you'll have is a network evaluation map. On this network evaluation map, you're going to highlight on each of these different pillars. Who are your advisors, who are your coaches, who are your mentors, who are your peers, who are data supportive, right, your sponsors and your met your supporters and your men keys.

List them out. List them out based off of what roles you think people have in your network. This purple box on the left, you're going to use that for people in these same roles, but that don't work in your organization. And how that will work is when you lay this out and you're gonna see who do I go to it for advice? This is your personal board of directors, your network. Who do I have as coaches? Who do I have as mentors? Who do I have as peers that are supportive? Sponsors, supporters, and mentee. And supporters and mentees are typically people that are below you. Because how are you growing the pipeline? How do you get promoted to an opportunity if you don't have anyone to backfill if you're not growing.

And so how do you call yourself a leader and you have no followers? That just means you're out for a walk. No one's following you. You're just walking. And so you want to think about that and lay that out. When you lay that out for inside your organization and outside, you'll be able to see where you are over indexed or where you're underutilizing. And then start to look at, oh, I need some more sponsors or I need to mentor some more people. Because what if you get an amazing opportunity? And they want you to go and you have budget, you have empowerment, you have everything, and they want you to go and create something brand new and lead a team to do that. But you have no peers that will support you.

You have no one that you will call to ask for help and support to share their network with you, or you have no one that will follow you. So you need to think about it from a holistic perspective so that you can continue to leverage your network in a strategic way. The other thing is when you look at outside of your network, if you want to transition, find a new opportunity, if you want to partner with your organization with another. You need to know who you have in your network and where they are and where they sit. And who are you to them? So when you start to lay that out, you will be able to see very clearly and concisely where you want to grow. How you want to, enhance your network. And if that means you start going to different events, you start connecting with people, you start moving and shaking in a different way, this will help you do that when you start to understand where you fall.

If your organization is small, there are different opportunities. I think that's even a an even better opportunity. I started my career working with small organizations. The benefit of that is that you get an opportunity to touch multiple parts of the business because the business is small, and you have an opportunity to build your expertise. And so I started in small business and knew how to do disaster recovery plans, security plans, retesting testing scripts, prepare business development presentations. I did a little bit of everything because the organization was small. And I did my, I asked questions I asked for support, and I did my best to make sure that I was a strong performer and I asked for feedback continuously, and that helped me build my brand. The next thing you'll have with this document that I shared with you is you'll have a structural empowerment questionnaire.

The questionnaire, which is here on your left, will highlight what it is, where you follow the empowerment spectrum, this is something that I created for our discussion and your current role. It ranges from roughly about 21 points or so to about a 105 points. When you figure out where you fall, how empowered you are. You're able to have conversations with your manager. You're able to have conversation with sponsors and mentors, and you will start to take the following step which is your personal empowerment plan to getting more empowered where you need to be. The additional thing that it helps you do is it helps you have more informed conversations. It's a very different dialogue when you say, I'm being left out. I don't feel included. And you sound kind of like you're complaining a little bit versus of actually taking an inventory of the different things that I'm involved in.

And I think if I had access to the X Y Z leadership meeting, I would gain greater perspective on what our key business imperatives are and how to how to make suggestions and improvements that could better impact our customers. You're still being left out. It's the same comment. You're just saying it differently.

I think that if Susie, John, Joe, I

think that if I'm able to shadow you in this meeting and attend I would be empowered with different information so that I can better deliver. Right? And so you're using different words. And you understand exactly where the gap is. And if you need to make a transition, quite honestly. And so you will have this. It's there. You have access to it, feel free to download it so that you can evaluate where you fall on the empowerment spectrum. That's the takeaway for you. I thank you. I will open up for questions. I have You can definitely ping me on LinkedIn. I have a QR code here, which I know cyber folks and security folks will not click all QR codes. But this QR code is linking to a feedback questionnaire on your thoughts on this presentation. Any questions that you may have on how it can be enhanced?

So I will open the floor up to you for questions in our last 4 to 5 minutes. Feel free to raise your hand or include them in the chat.

Let's see. You're welcome. You're welcome.

I shared the plan with you. Alright. Let's see. Can we talk about finding sponsors when your organization is small or newly acquired? I did share that. And they do not have a formal mentoring program, which uses the friction networking with higher ups. At a lot of events, the examples I hear about sponsors come from folks in larger tech organizations. I'm the only woman on my team and the only black person.

Well, being a woman, I'm, Evua. A lot of

times that happens. So here's the question, and here's the suggestion I would have for you. Propose it. Propose a mentoring and sponsoring event, mentoring and sponsoring program. Start it small. And you will find someone who can be an executive sponsor. That would be my suggestion to you, right, because Why not? This is and then you undergird it with similar data that I shared with you, which is how mentoring in sponsoring, and you could definitely reach out to me if you need some more information to pull it together. How mentoring and sponsoring can help the business. And that and your spearheading, that event, and that activity. The other thing you can do is part if they don't have a lot of women and people of color, you can talk about sponsorship. So there's women in cyber. There's all of these different opportunities, to partner, and you have different individuals that wanna speak. And you bring those to the organization. So spearhead and lead it.

If it does not exist, create it, why not? So that's my suggestion for you. Let's see if we have a few more questions.

Let's implement the plan. Okay. Yes.

How can you better support others and branch out? Don't forget, Don't forget to reach back. Do not forget to do that. What is the interest of a sponsor to actually do it as as it's taking a risk. So why that's a fantastic question, Stephanie. So why do sponsors want to do it? Because sponsors need followers. That's one. The other thing is as you grow up further and further in your career, you are applauded and evaluated by high how well you grow the pipeline and how well you identify talent. It is super expensive to recruit, train, and retain employees. And so sponsors wanna make the investment that support them. And the same example I gave you, what if you get a great opportunity and you need someone to follow you? Who's gonna follow you? Sponsors need that as well.

And so they have people that are willing to sponsor that are willing to follow them and make it to help them make it to the next level. Sometimes you share information with the sponsor and sponsor share relationships with you. It becomes a very reciprocal relationships. So we're almost at time. Let's see if we have more questions. Yeah. So finding talent, critical. We are applauded for it, and then it makes them look good. So make sure you perform you do well, and you make your sponsors look good. So I will drop the link again in the chat just so that you have it. It's on my it's on my drive. I'm super passionate about this topic. Definitely connect with me on LinkedIn if you have more questions. I would love to see your feedback on the survey.

And I hope you have a good rest of your day at the conference. Are there any last minute questions, outstanding questions that we could answer before we close out the session? It's going once. Going twice. Okay. I will stop the share. Thank you so so much for attending, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day. Be well.