This was the first mentorship program I was a part of. Today is the last day of the program so I decided to highlight my takeaways from the whole experience.

I already followed Portuguese Women in Tech in social media, and it was there that I found out they were accepting candidates for the second round of their mentorship program.

At the time I was reading Mastery by Robert Greene, where he talks about the importance of mentor-protégé relationships, so the program immediately picked my interest. Additionally, until then, I haven’t had met any other women in tech (least in cyber security), and it felt I was missing an important part of my professional growth.

Yet, in truth, I didn’t think I “qualified” for being a mentee (boy, was I wrong 😅). I thought this program was directed to young students, and I had already finished my MSc a couple months before and was already working.

So, I scheduled a notification on my calendar with the applications deadline (February 24th 2021, it’s still there 📅) and everyday I looked at it trying to convince myself I should apply anyway. Four days before the deadline I thought that I would be very angry at myself if I didn’t at least try (sometimes future anger is a good motivator!).

I wrote an honest application and a few days later I was told I was accepted in the program. 🙌

The kickoff was on the 8th of March, on international Women’s Day. Spending this day with 100+ women was an amazing experience (a once-in-a-lifetime type of experience).

At the end of this session we were asked to take note of what we wanted to achieve with this program, so we could check back at the end. The goals I had written were:

  • “Determine a practical way to approach and plan a career path”;
  • “Learn what it means to be a good mentor”;
  • “Connect with several mentors, and at least with one other mentee”.

After this session, the program ran for 5 months where we had around 10 webinars and 5 networking events. We learned about working on international projects, the job market, CVs and career planning, UX/UI design, remote work, among other subjects.

I made sure to attend all events, even if the subject was not really of my interest (I’m looking at you UX/UI) but I know you can always learn something new: how to give a good presentation, how to prepare good slides, how to lead a conversation or how to get the audience to interact with you. These are invaluable lessons that I took away from the presentations that I thought I wasn’t that interested in, but ended up learning a lot.

On networking events, we shared with each other a bit of everything, ranging from best/worst career advices to what superpower we would have if we could choose one.

Looking back I am happy to say all my initial goals (and more) were achieved:

  • Using a step-by-step/MVP way of thinking and a selling mindset, where everything (life, career) can be seen as a “product”, you can plan you career:
    1. Define a goal
    2. Study the market
    3. Catalog tasks you need to accomplish
    4. Prioritize tasks and work task-by-task
    5. Review task catalog and adjust priorities
    6. Choose next task
    7. Keep going
  • From a mentor-mentee relationship you can definitely understands what it takes to be a good mentor.
    1. Be your mentee biggest cheerleader. Sometimes what we need is someone reminding us we can do anything and giving us a push.
    2. Take initiative. This should be done by both sides of the relationship. As a mentee, it’s in your interest to take the most out of the mentorship. As a mentor, it is your job to give the resources to do so.
    3. Establish goals for the mentorship.

  • For my final goal, in addition to the networking events, I personally reached out to mentors in PWIT network specialized in cyber security, that took the time to share their thoughts about the field. These conversations ended up having the biggest impact regarding the next step of my career. And, finally, connected with another mentee with interest in the same field.

  • In addition, seeing amazing women being and doing awesome things gave me the push to finally creating this website, step-by-step.

At the end, I am glad of everything I learned, and more convinced than ever that you are never too old to be a mentee, or too young to share your thoughts and experiences. Still, this isn’t the end. We have a circle space and WhatsApp groups where we are able to keep in touch with everyone on PWIT.

All is left to say is a big thank you to my mentor and all PWIT team for this incredible initiative!