Webinar 6: Mentors and Sponsors (How Academic Women Can Help Each Other)

Join our webinar with a gender strategist and two female Australian Research Council Laureate Fellows, to reflect on being a positive mentor and sponsor of other women, including how to seek this sort of support and how to provide it.

Although women researchers can benefit from both mentoring and sponsorship, we are likely to be more familiar with the mentor/mentee relationship, in which mentors act as role model, and provide support and guidance to their mentees. In contrast, sponsorship involves the active and deliberative use of power (arising from one’s organisational position, professional standing, influence, connections, et cetera) to facilitate the careers of others. Not only do sponsors provide sponsees with advice, they also seek opportunities for the sponsee by connecting them with other senior leaders and publicly espousing the capabilities of their sponsees.

In the sixth webinar of the "Small Wins" series, we have invited Dr Jennifer de Vries, a gender researcher and strategist, to discuss sponsorship practices in academic careers and how women researchers can be sponsorship savvy.  She will be joined by two ARC Laureate Fellows, who will reflect on how to mentor and sponsor other women, as well as how to seek greater mentoring and sponsorship when needed: John Curtin Distinguished Professor Sharon K. Parker (Curtin University), host of the Women in Research "Small Wins" series; and Distinguished Professor Jie Lu (University of Technology Sydney).

Topics covered will include:

• The important distinction between mentoring and sponsorship
• How mentoring and sponsorship help to build a successful research career
• The challenges of sponsorship for less linear careers (e.g. part-time, parental breaks)
• How to obtain greater mentoring and sponsorship

Participants will have the opportunity to virtually share tips with each other, and ask the guests questions.

About the speakers:

• Dr Jennifer de Vries is an organisational consultant, public speaker, facilitator and independent researcher. She develops and facilitates Leadership Development, Gender Capacity Building, and Mentoring and Sponsorship programs and workshops.
• Sharon K. Parker is an ARC Laureate Fellow, a John Curtin Distinguished Professor, and the Director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design within the Future of Work Institute at Curtin University. Sharon’s research focuses on job and work design, employee performance and development, mature workers, mental health and well-being, and related topics. Sharon is a recipient of the ARC’s Kathleen Fitzpatrick Award, the developer of the Women in Research initiative, and the host of the Women in Research "Small Wins" webinar series.
• Jie Lu is a Distinguished Professor, an IEEE Fellow, IFSA Fellow and ARC Laureate Fellow. She is an internationally renowned scientist in the areas of computational intelligence, specifically in fuzzy transfer learning, concept drift, decision support systems, and recommender systems.

Eligibility: Open to all women academics who engage in research as part of their role, Level A to Level E, across all disciplines and Universities/Research institutions

Cost: Free but registration is essential to access the webinar

Platform: Microsoft Teams (please note that attendees will need to have Microsoft Teams downloaded to access the event)