Alison Martin - Podcast Show Notes
In today's episode of From the Basement Up, we are joined by Alison Martin of Engage Mentoring. Based in Indianapolis, this mentoring group seeks out businesses, universities, or people looking to expand their network and expand their skillset. Listeners will get a glimpse of a beautiful connected world that supports one another, all created by today’s wonderful guests.
Engage Mentoring provides a leadership program for companies and individuals to access mentoring on topics of their choosing while impacting the next generation of talent by providing a mentoring program to college students through partnerships with nonprofits and universities. In learning through this mentoring program, mentees are offered the ability to learn about new topics they may have previously had an interest in, or maybe had never heard of. Within the span of months, professionals can grow their interest base and become experts in new areas of their abilities.
Engage Mentoring provides a leadership program for companies and individuals to access mentoring on topics of their choosing while impacting the next generation of talent by providing a mentoring program to college students through partnerships with nonprofits and universities.
Digital Strategy in the mentoring world has been pretty untouched. With the blueprints Engage Mentoring creates, a digital strategy can be used to advance each of us in our personal endeavors! This program has shaped the networks, strategies, and learning opportunities of many groups of women and people, and will continue to do so!
Alison Martin is the Founder and CEO of Engage Mentoring, a software-enabled leadership development program that helps companies attract, retain, and develop their talent through strategic mentoring initiatives. With impressive background work and roughly 20 years in nonprofit, beginning with four years working in higher education and on to Executive Director at two different health-related nonprofit organizations, Alison’s passion for developing talent led her to start a consulting firm in 2011. Her work consulting with large associations, nonprofits, and companies to construct mentoring programs led to the development of Engage Mentoring in 2019.
Allison also founded the Project Lead for Women program. Project Lead for Women was developed to provide mentoring for women at all stages of their careers and its vision is to build the largest and most effective professional mentoring program for women in the nation. She has two children and volunteers for Girls Inc and serves on the board for Purposeful Women Inc, a nonprofit that provides coaching, mentoring, and support for women. She was nominated for Indianapolis Best and Brightest in 2013 and was recognized with the Indiana Commission for Women’s Torchbearer award in 2014. She is the author of the book, “Learning to Lead Through Mentoring”, published first in 2013 and re-released in 2016, which outlines the 8 lessons one must consider before pursuing a mentoring relationship.
Helpful links:
http://mentoringwomensnetwork.com
Alison Martin - Transcript
MICHELLE
As a business owner, one of the biggest pain points is a mis- hire. Even worse, that mis- hire is in a leadership position. You find yourself questioning was it leadership? Was it lack of training? Was it a bad fit? Regardless, it can be a painful experience for both the employee and potentially harmful to your company. My next guest has created a program for companies to access diverse talent backed by a strategic and simple structured mentoring program. I would like to introduce to you Allison Martin, the creator of Engage Mentoring.
ALLISON MARTIN
Thanks Michelle. Hello.
MICHELLE
Hi. Welcome to From the Basement Up, Allison. It's so great to have you here.
EMILY
Hi Allison. Welcome.
MICHELLE
Allison, before we get into Engage Mentoring I just wanted to also kind of ask you about your background and then I would love to hear your elevator pitch for Engage Mentoring.
ALLISON MARTIN
Sure. Well, my background actually started in higher ed. That was where I got my early start in my career and then I went on to work for two different voluntary health organizations and had the distinction of being the youngest Executive Director in the country at the time when I was with the first organization. At that point, my family and I moved to Indianapolis and I share that because my background kind of evolved into me actually initially starting a nonprofit that had a mentoring focus and when we were trying to design what that was going to look like, the desire to create a program, we researched a lot of software curriculum and other resources to try to support that, and didn't find exactly what we were looking for. Actually, set out at that point, back in 2012, was when our original software product rolled out, but actually created something from scratch to help facilitate the matches. In the work that I do today, Engage Mentoring has both a software component and a really unique way of how we match and schedule and administer mentoring programs. But then our other program that you referenced earlier called Project Lead for Women is a platform for executives who are passionate about their own development and the development of others and a way for them to sponsor employees in a community- based program, where the employees are participating as both mentor and mentee. And we allow college students to access the program as mentees by partnering with universities in specific geographies, or universities and colleges. I love that program because it allows the participating companies, as you said, to access a diverse talent pipeline in a really unique way, but also for the employees participating, not just to build their skills as being a mentee, but actually learn what it feels like to pour into others as a mentor and really develop their leadership capacity even further. As you might guess, because of my background in nonprofit I'm very passionate about community impact and what that really looks like. This is a culmination of all of my passions around mentoring and those types of things into something that is so scalable and easy to administer, and we're able to work with companies of all sizes, not just the really massive companies who can invest in a software package.
MICHELLE
That's great. The Project Lead for Women, I am very excited to get to that. I also want to hear more about you, too. I know you were in higher education, but this is a massive program that you've created and you've got major universities on board. You've even partnered, or you're partnering with a local university or college, Sienna College. I'm just curious as far as how did you get started for people out there starting a new business? What was the seed that got this going?
ALLISON MARTIN
I'm going to tell you a few things that I don't always tell people right away, but I think would resonate with your listening audience. Number one is I started, really, with an idea. I kind of stumbled upon a need in the early piece of wanting to do something specifically centered around women that wasn't industry specific. It really had to fail my way forward and inaudible in terms of the development of the program, how that's allocated, addressing pricing. I'll tell you that I didn't get started in a way that I recommend, but I left a six figure job because I wanted to see what I could do and I didn't really have a huge plan. I just thought, " Okay, I can give myself a year and see what I can do. If it doesn't work out I can always go back to doing the work that I did previously because I happened to be pretty good at it." That was the promise and how I got started. That was 11 years ago, I think at this point. As you said, we have developed some amazing partnerships. We work with amazing companies and universities. I'll also share something, again, that I... I actually wrote a book in 2013 and it was re- released in 2016 called Learning to Lead Through Mentoring. It was a reflection on my journey and really intended to help readers reflect on their journeys and help them create dialogue with prospective mentors on things like failure and how do I overcome and how do I really develop grit. But I was actually out on my own when I was 16. I was legally emancipated at 17 and I became a single mom at 18. My early start was very challenged and I wouldn't have had the career that I had, nor would I be standing here today, if it weren't for incredible mentors who poured into me. And so, it's funny how in retrospect you look at those things and you go, " Okay, it all makes sense. The journey makes a lot more sense," but it's definitely a deep passion of mine and this didn't happen by accident. I'm just a huge believer in how you really can transform your life by connecting to the right people and really cultivating those relationships intentionally.
MICHELLE
So you were a young mom and starting out in the world, and I know I was a train wreck in my 20s and I didn't have any reason to be. I really had everything. My parents were helpful. I had a college degree and I still couldn't figure things out. Hearing your start, you had a lot of obstacles there that you had to overcome so the fact that you're talking about grit, it is so important and I love how you seem to have immediately dived into the nonprofit world. Was that your first venture into your career, was working with nonprofits?
ALLISON MARTIN
Well, it was and it was everything sort of happened, I don't want to say by accident, but you look back you go, " Oh wow, it's interesting how life unfolds in ways you couldn't have anticipated." I actually just got a job in sales because sales is generally what you can make money at and not have to have the benefit of an education that I didn't have at the time. That led to me working at a proprietary school to really work with the population of mostly first generation college students to offer some proprietary programs that were designed to help people just move quickly from point A to point B and gainful employment. I heard myself telling people that they needed to prioritize their education and I realized that I needed to do that for myself. I went ahead to enroll in a school that wasn't the school I worked for, but had the accreditation I was looking for and the really great programming and the flexible schedule that would allow me to also work, because I was a single mom, and they offered me a job during the admissions process that also included tuition remission. So, I was able to get my bachelor's degree while working in the admissions office and being a single parent and kind of all that entails. By the time I graduated, I was married and pregnant with my daughter who came along when I was 24. I was 24 when I got my bachelor's degree. That was my first sort of, by happenstance, I fell into working in higher ed and that led to an opportunity with a voluntary health organization that I absolutely loved where I was able to draw my skills that I learned in the higher ed piece. What I loved most about that was the fact that the transformation that you saw from when people came in the door to when they walked across the stage from a graduation perspective, that I got to experience myself. So drawing on that, it was a natural transition into the nonprofit space where you could see the impact of your work. I've also kind of drawn on that, even though I now don't work for a nonprofit. I work for a for- profit company, but we partner with a lot of nonprofits in a very impactful way. So rather than creating partnerships where there's some sort of financial reciprocity, we're partnering with universities to give opportunities to female college students and what an amazing thing. I think back to the younger version of myself and how a program like this really would have transformed just the ability to make connections. So, if you don't have parents who can do that for you, how do you do that? How do you make connections? That's what I get most excited about, is the implications that it has on both sides of the equation, both for the student as well as for the employees and the employers who offer this program.
MICHELLE
Now, I think that that's a really good thing. That may have been my issue in my early 20s. I wasn't exposed to very much. So how do you know, even coming out of school, like, " Where do I go? What do I do? What's my next step?" Emily, you're actually kind of at that age where you're... Emily is actually getting her graduate degree-
EMILY
Well, I have a very different circumstance. I was abroad during Covid, sent home during Covid, graduated during Covid, and so I had two years to kind of sit there and figure out what I wanted to do, but I'm sitting here listening to you and just the benefit of even creating that community of a network of women would have been... I feel like I missed out a little bit, but it's okay because now I am going to get a network of my own and it's out there. It's going to be so great on all sides of the equation. I totally agree.
ALLISON MARTIN
Thank you. I appreciate that perspective as well. I have a daughter who's a sophomore in college right now and-
EMILY
That's a tough year.
ALLISON MARTIN
It is. And figuring out what you want to do and all those things, and so it's nice that you had the benefit of that and to get some additional perspective, too. Congrats on pursuing your graduate degree. That's awesome.
EMILY
Yeah, thank you.
MICHELLE
Does your daughter give you feedback on networks that are available to young women? Do you hear about that from her?
ALLISON MARTIN
She actually, I had her participate. She interned for us last summer and got the benefit of participating in our mentoring program. My daughter actually participated, or she was an intern for us last year and she got to participate in a mentoring program and she was just like, " Mom, this is so cool," in terms of the people that she was able to connect with. She has, she's gotten the benefit of some really great resources at the school that she is a part of. I think that we're doing a great job of teaching this next generation to be intentional about cultivating those relationships, how important a network is, and how to go about doing that, and I know that that's been a message that I've been carrying forward to her. There are a lot of great, I think, student organizations and student resources. I think the uniqueness of what we offer for people to say, " I want to work on my communication skills and connect to a mentor," or, " I just need some perspective of what it's like to work in the healthcare industry," is a really great value and benefit for the students who are selected for what we call our Aspiring Leaders Program.
MICHELLE
Because I have a list of questions for you, but as you're speaking, I would love to hear... So, I'm a business owner and I let you know that I've really struggled hiring diversity in my company. It's important to me, but I can't seem... We live in a very white community and I don't... but the applicants or the resumes, how do I do this? How do I diversify my employee base and open ourselves up? I just want to make sure that when I'm doing this I'm doing this very mindfully and I'm bringing in the right people and I'm assuming that Engage Mentoring, you would find that? I want to make sure I bring on someone who's going to want to be here and that succeeds in being here.
ALLISON MARTIN
Yeah, absolutely. You highlighted a few important things. I want to talk through that because I'm certainly not the expert in all things diversity. I just know that access to relationships needs to be a critical part of that strategy and also being intentional about where you're recruiting from. A lot of times companies will, and I'm not saying yours is, and I also know that when you live in an area that demographic- wise there isn't a ton of diversity, it does present a challenge, but I think that challenge becomes something that we have to be really intentional about. So, things like how are we sourcing talent? How are we establishing partnerships with schools in the area, if we recruit from schools? Even if you can and if it's for higher level positions, intentionally selecting recruiting firms that have access to those networks is something that I know that we've done to really put some intentionality behind that. And then also just making sure you have an environment where people are going to feel supported and developed because I think the mistake that a lot of companies make is, yeah, they change their recruiting tactics, they try to ensure that they're being intentional behind that and spinning their wheels trying to get diverse talent in the door. But then that piece of feeling supported, feeling developed, and having access to relationships really needs to be there. Just taking the perspective of being a female, because I identify as a female, when I go to a company, from the outside looking in, I can tell if it's a place that's going to be very female friendly. You just know, right? And so, that would apply to any diversity category. If you think about what it means for a prospective employee to say, " We're very intentional with our efforts to ensure that all employees feel supported, feel developed, have access to relationships." One of those pieces that's critical for us is having a mentoring program, which ensures that you're going to have access to the relationships that will help you grow within this organization and it's one of our core values. I think just making sure that the inside matches the desire and the outside and that you've got structures in place that allow people to really be intentional behind accessing relationships because absent that, people tend to mentor and sponsor younger versions of themselves and they tend to connect with other people who look like them and share similar values. That creates a very lonely experience for employees who check any other diversity category, to be able to have that opportunity and access to relationships. But if culturally, you can address that and kind of make it an environment that embraces, really, everyone and gives them an opportunity, that's where I think the real key, that's where the real magic happens. And so, we can help companies with that intentionality and the good news is we can do that for companies of all sizes, not just the really massive companies. It isn't magic. It isn't rocket science, but I think you're on the right track just by calling it out and saying, " Hey, we really want to do this and how do we change what we've been doing so that we can actually get some different results?" Was that helpful?
MICHELLE
Yes, absolutely. This is something that is on my list. I've speaking to the business admin staff and it's something that when we're hiring we need to be very aware of and just for everybody here, too. We do our best, but I have failed in this area and I've recognized it and I'm just trying to figure out how to do a better job. I do want to also have you go into Engage Mentoring and then also the Project Lead for Women and kind of explain the difference between the two.
ALLISON MARTIN
Sure. Engage Mentoring at our core, we have a software curriculum that allows employers to offer a way for employees to access training and development on topics of their choosing with mentors. We work with a wide variety of clients and associations in that area to help them create community through mentoring with utilizing our resources. Project Lead for Women is actually more of a geographically based program that allows us to work with employers within specific geographic areas, starting with executive women who are, again, passionate about development for themselves as well as the development of others and give them an outlet to be part of an executive program where they are kind of in a peer mentoring type of opportunity and collaborating with other executive women in their community. They typically are decision makers within their company to identify employees who would be candidates for either what's called our Developing Leaders Program, which is open to high potential leaders as well as existing leaders, or our Project Lead for Women program, which again, it resonates typically with women who are passionate about developing themselves and others. We deploy a communication to employees to opt in to one of those two programs. The best part of the program is that for every employee who's sponsored in the program, we're able to sponsor a female college student at no cost to the student and no cost to the educational institution that we partner with. That's why it's more geographically based. You mentioned Sienna earlier, and so we're finalizing a partnership there. We chose that organization, most of the institutions that we work with, because a lot of their students do elect to stay in the area. So, it's a great student population for employers to really connect with and they have just really embraced this idea and this opportunity to really specifically help their female students there. The executives who invest in this program for their employees, they really benefit by knowing that it's impacting the community that they live and work and helping their employer to also access a really incredible talent pipeline as well.
MICHELLE
Nice. You did mention that there's a software with Engage Mentoring. Can you explain what the software does? Is it kind of a blueprint, I guess, for you to move forward?
ALLISON MARTIN
Yeah. Yes, sure. Our software itself allows participants to come in and upload a photo, share some basic directory information, and validate their timezone and also the topics that they would be potentially willing to mentor others on. So, we have more than 50 different leadership focus topics that are in either personal growth or skill development. So, things like communication skills or executive presence or public speaking sills. All purchase goes to an initial assessment where they identify the skills that they would be willing to reflect on with others. And then they go in and once they've created their profile, they can select mentors based on the skills they want to work on and then take advantage of some supplemental learning on those topics as well. We have a very robust learning library that allows me to say, " I want to work with Michelle on public speaking and then I also am going to take advantage of supplemental content to really learn, because what a powerful way to shortcut your learning by working with a mentor, and an amazing way for us to meet people where they are because every individual is different in terms of what their needs are and based on what their goals are, as well as what position they're currently occupying. The software facilitates those matches and the design of it is that each quarter participants select a topic, they select a mentor to work with them on that topic, and then they take advantage of supplemental learning. So, in 12 months they're able to connect with up to four different mentors on topics of their choosing, and ideally, they make themselves available to others, including college students on topics where they have experience, which sounds philanthropic, but what we're doing is encouraging people not to just see themselves as mentees, but also as mentors. I would argue we actually are developing leadership capacity more in that realm because there's no better way to learn how to be a leader than to learn how to mentor and pour into others. It's a really well- rounded approach to leadership development that also impacts the communities that people live and work in.
MICHELLE
This is tremendous. I don't think I've ever heard of this before. Are you the only one out there doing this?
ALLISON MARTIN
Good question. We're actually talking to leadership firms right now and there are some community- based mentoring programs that we've seen, but not that's executing in the way that I'm describing. Like I said, there is a whole lot of twists and turns to get to where we are today, but we've landed on something that is really gaining traction and just really exciting and people are coming out of the woodwork to support. Even the outlet of the executives connecting with one another has just been so well received because I'm a business owner, you're a business owner, how often do we have that ability to do that intentionally with other key executives or business owners in our communities? That part has really been tremendous as well.
MICHELLE
Absolutely. This is fantastic.
EMILY
I had a question. At the beginning you said what led you to this was you saw a need and I was wondering what the need was specifically that led you here?
ALLISON MARTIN
Good question. So, as I mentioned earlier, I got my early start in nonprofit and I worked for voluntary health organization where at the age of 29 I was the Executive Director and I had 34 staff and a 23 member board of directors and access to every... It sounds like I'm bragging and I'm not trying to, but every CEO in town was involved in this large voluntary health organization. I thought, " Gosh, if more women my age had access to this level of perspective, what an amazing place it would be." That was sort of the first emphasis of, " Gosh, I have friends who are my peer age group that could really benefit from this and then I'm also finding that I'm building relationships with people who are significantly older because of the circles that I run into being an Executive Director." I thought, " Wouldn't it be amazing if I could bring those two worlds together?" It was later that that spark turned into me pulling together a room that had a friend of mine that was 22 years old at the time and a Pilates instructor and the CEO of a major hospital in town and we had 12 different people with so many diverse backgrounds and perspectives and thought, " Gosh, what can we create here?" That was the beginning of that journey. The more I've talked to, particularly other women, where you're sharing stories about how things happen in the workplace and situations we've experienced and that sort of thing, that need for connectivity has always been there. So, I think that, not to say that men don't need mentoring or that women don't need male perspective, that's not it, but that connectivity piece has always reigned true. I think we all recognize that it's important to have a variety of different perspectives where mentoring is concerned, but just for sheer numbers, having access to really great female leaders who can give that perspective is tremendous as you're growing up. That's when I discovered that we stumbled upon a need, just by virtue of how quickly that program itself grew and how quickly the Project Lead for Women program is growing as well. It's pretty evident that it's needed. And then, even right now, the number of women that are presumably leaving the workplace as a result of the past few years and the pandemic, and we could talk all day long about why we think that might be, but it's alarming. I think organizations are starting to take notice, and that's why the timeliness of this program is really worth noting as well. Thanks for asking that question, Emily.
EMILY
Yeah, no problem.
MICHELLE
You're based in Indiana. How many states... because I can see this catching fire and going nationwide. So, how many states do you find that your program is now operating in?
ALLISON MARTIN
Wonderful question. We are. The company is based in Indianapolis and we have had a really great partnership both with the Commission for Higher Ed there as well as the Indiana State Chamber. We've learned a lot about how we go to a market and how we establish partnerships and what that looks like, and programmatically what we offer. We're now at a stage where we've brokered partnerships with schools in your area as well as Florida and Houston and St. Louis. I actually love building relationships and going into different cities. As we scale this program, I'm actually going to those cities that I mentioned earlier to just... and in the case of your area, too, we've hired Al Loren who's a Market Director. We've contracted with her to help lead that area as the market share for that area and she's been amazing at brokering conversations. All that to say that we could go anywhere with this. So, as you said, the opportunities really are endless, but foundationally, if we can establish a university partnership and we have at least five corporate partners in the area, that's when we'll typically launch in an area and be able to sort of hire someone to keep things going. So, in the next couple years I'll be actually physically going into some of those places to be able to build local relationships with executives like yourself to paint the picture of what we're trying to create and kind of gain their support. The best part of it is people know who else they want to be around the table and associated with, so it's been great because people are like, "Oh, have you talked to this person? Have you talked to that person?" There's a lot of excitement there. It's exciting for me to be in a position to be able to do that and also for the company to ensure we have a really great foundation as we're hiring people to manage specific areas. Those areas I mentioned are the ones that are next on the horizon and then we're going to continue, probably at a place of one every two months.
MICHELLE
That's fantastic. As far as, I would love to hear, if you wouldn't mind, sharing a couple stories that are kind of near and dear to your heart, a couple of success stories if you don't mind having one or two that you wouldn't mind sharing with the listeners?
ALLISON MARTIN
I'm trying to think. The ones that have been shared with me or the ones that I've experienced myself? I have been a mentor in the program myself and I have learned, as you might not expect, I have learned so much from the people that I've gotten to work with. Right now I'm working with a gentleman who is in Canada. His company is actually headquartered in Canada, but they have a campus here and they were the ones that authored the partnership. I'm working with him on being a new manager. He's anticipating what being a new manager will feel like and kind of we're talking through some of the things that he would want to sure up in terms of being ready for that opportunity. The thing I'll share is just from a company perspective. We don't have a program where everyone and one diversity category is mentoring others. It's people are going in and selecting topics and selecting mentors to work with them on that topic. I had another interesting... Our Chief Diversity Officer at a company that we work with had shared that someone had reached out to her that was trans. They developed a relationship on the basis of the topic that this person wanted to learn more about and they told her the reason they selected her is because she had the pronouns after her name and they thought that meant that she would be safe and I love hearing those stories because it really is transformative in terms of being able to connect with people who can offer perspective and we have such an amazing community of people who really do care. We're training people on how to be mentors. We're really ensuring that that happens.
EMILY
Thank you so much for joining us today on From the Basement Up. Please be sure to check namebubbles. com for our blog on the podcast and all of the show notes, resources, and links for our guests every Thursday, and please be sure to leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. See you next week, and thank you.
