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The Value of Mentorship from a LightBox Developing Leaders Program Mentee
By: LightBox Team
May 11, 2020
It’s no exaggeration to say that a great mentorship can be a life-altering experience. The right mentor prepares young people to succeed in their chosen fields. On the flip side, supporting mentees is a great way to ensure the talent pipeline and future success of the mentor’s industry. Mentors help prepare mentees for professional careers and teach valuable workplace skills like how to realize workplace goals, how to network for growth, how to find the right job, and can even introduce them to people and organizations they need to know to enhance their careers.
The LightBox Developing Leaders Program is on a mission to create leaders in due diligence and risk management in commercial real estate (CRE) lending and environmental consulting. Having recently wrapped its first year, we’ve found the Program to be enormously successful for both mentors and mentees. To highlight the Program’s success, we’ve asked mentee Chelsea Halley to share her experience in the LightBox Developing Leaders Program.
How The Developing Leaders Program Led to a New Career Opportunity
When Chelsea started the program, she was living in Austin, TX working for an environmental consulting firm, but she wanted to move to North Carolina. The Developing Leaders Program helped her achieve her goal.
What it’s Like to Work with a Developing Leaders Mentor
Chelsea got involved in the Developing Leaders Program because she was seeking a mentor in her industry, but not someone she worked with like a current or previous manager. It was important to her to connect with someone who understood the industry but wasn’t coming to the relationship with any connection to her specific job history.
Chelsea was paired with Elizabeth Krol as her mentor and has enormous gratitude for Krol’s support and guidance. Krol is a highly regarded expert in environmental and real estate due diligence, with a career that features multiple awards and positions within various professional groups. Additionally, having a female mentor was important to Chelsea, as she has found the field of environmental and real estate due diligence and consulting is predominantly male. She wanted a female who understood what it’s like to be a woman in a male dominated field.
Krol helped Chelsea feel highly supported in her career trajectory, advising her on how to achieve her goals. Chelsea found that Krol offered her a unique perspective and advice, while being a safe space where she could discuss career issues that she could not discuss with coworkers.
The Developing Leaders Program and Career Growth
The Developing Leaders Program has greatly impacted Chelsea’s career trajectory and has taught her lessons that will remain with her as she navigates her future.
Chelsea also found that the program was well organized and offered an ideal amount of structure. The program allows mentors and mentees to have scheduled conversations about topics discussed during the program, as well as the freedom to discuss topics outside of the mentorship program. Additionally, all of the mentors are available to each mentee in the program, and Chelsea was grateful to have the opportunity to reach out to other mentors for advice if she needed to.
A huge part of the group’s success according to Chelsea was its cohesiveness, which helped her feel like she was truly part of a team.
Chelsea would encourage anyone thinking about it to apply to The Developing Leaders Program.
Maybe one day we’ll see Chelsea back in The Developing Leaders Program.
We are looking forward to following along with the next class of Developing Leaders in 2020. While applications for this year are now closed, interested parties can email developingleaders@lightboxre.com for more information about applications for next year. And for more information about the Developing Leaders Program, click here.
Category Developing Leaders
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