A mentor is a person who can support, advise and guide you. They typically take the time to get to know you and the challenges you're facing and then use their understanding and personal experience to help you improve.

What a mentor isn't:

❌ While a mentor can provide invaluable support and guidance across a range of topics including mental health, they are not a therapist. It is important to establish this with all parties participating in mentoring.

❌ A mentor is not the same as a coach. Coaches are paid for and provide time-bound teaching on specific topics.

❌ Mentoring is not a magic cure. While mentoring can support a range of development goals and has many benefits for both parties and organizations, it isn’t going to fix everything. There are many complementary ways to develop your people alongside mentoring.

In addition to profile information such as LinkedIn, TwM collects information from mentors around their strengths and mentees around their needs.

Based on this information, and potentially additional conversations, Thrive cohort leaders pre-match each mentee with up to 3 possible mentors and also each mentor with up to 3 possible mentees. During the launch event - these pre-matched pairs have conversations, which are about getting to know each other and feeling the chemistry.

Both mentors and mentees are asked to specify their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd preferences. The matches are finalized to maximize preference choices.

No, we have no age limit. However, most of our mentees are women who have 5-10 years of work experience and our mentors typically have 15-20 years of work experience.

Our mission is to support early career women leaders on their journey. We do not discriminate against age. Our evaluation criteria are based on the scope and scale of impact, and where the individual is in her career to maximize her growth.

All sessions are held on the phone / Zoom / WhatsApp / Google-hangouts / In person, whichever mentors & mentees prefer. Pairs generally discuss this in the first meeting and design together what works the best.

Typically, mentees are recommended to schedule the calls and communicate with the mentor.

No. Mentoring is extremely personal and individualized. Eac mentee and mentor work on very different topics from session to session depending on the mentee's needs and goals. Thrive offers several resources like mentoring contract, meeting review template and other optional tools for pairs to use. We have a mentor training video series and cohort leaders regularly check-in with each pair an offer support if needed.

Yes. Each session is private, personal, and confidential. Participants do not share the contents of their sessions unless the participant wants to specifically outside of the mentoring relationship. Participants are required to complete pre and post-program surveys for us to understand how effective the program is and how we can best support the participants. However, we do not expect participants to divulge any details if they do not wish to disclose.

A mentor & mentee decide together how frequently, and also how long each mentoring session will be. We recommend a live in person or live online interaction of 90 minutes monthly. The most change and transformation happens with consistency.

Once a Thriver completes her program, she becomes part of our alumnae network. She will continue to be on our mailing list, receive invitations to our future events, have access to opportunities such as online workshops and trainings, and stay connected with the other alumnae members.

Thrive is a volunteer-led organization with a few paid employees. The registration fees are used to pay employees and running costs such as a website, social media channels, the online community/learning platform, event-related costs (COVID allowing), and other administrative costs to run a global non-profit organization such as insurance, etc.

As a part of the 6-month mentoring program,

Mentees benefit from 6-8 mentoring meetings 3 in-person/virtual events (COVID driven): Launch event, Structured Networking Event, Closure event, access to an online community and learning platform, and early access to Thrive skill-building workshops through our ‘Live from Thrive’ platform.

Mentors offer the 6-8 mentoring meetings and benefit from 3 in-person events/virtual events (COVID driven): Launch event, Structured Networking Event, Closure event, monthly mentor support calls, and early access to access to Thrive skill-building workshops through our ‘Live from Thrive’ platform.

The mentee is the key beneficiary of the mentoring relationship. As such mentees cover most of the administration costs for the program.

The mentor is asked to make a symbolic contribution towards the administration costs to keep the fee for the mentee realistic and to ensure her commitment to the batch.

As Thrive addresses the personal development of professional women, the standard of its materials needs to meet industry standards. IT infrastructure, administrative support, web development, etc. are delivered from low-cost locations to keep the operational costs minimal. So far earnings are generated only through registration fees for batches or courses. As operations stabilize, we are looking at other methods to generate earnings to sustain operations including sponsorships and impact investors.

Thrive runs a bootstrapped set-up with no excess earnings. In fact, some mentoring batches may not be able to cover the administration costs depending on the purchasing power parity of the country. Thrive also offers scholarships to support women who may be economically disadvantaged.