Launch of Seniors Mentoring Programme

On Thursday 12 November, Wycombe Abbey launched its new Pupil and Seniors Mentoring programme.

This initiative is available to all Upper Sixth pupils, offering girls the opportunity to be mentored by Wycombe Abbey alumnae with experience  across a diverse range of professions, universities and countries to inspire the girls in their future career choices. The launch of the mentoring programme was a great success, with over 140 Seniors registering to become a mentor for current pupils.

The first session hosted 26 Upper Sixth pupils and 22 Senior mentors, with combined experiences across Medicine, Science, Film, Theatre, Engineering, Law, Journalism, Finance, Marketing and Social Media. This first mentoring session was hosted virtually via Zoom, allowing a global reach of Seniors to participate and offer advice from the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and America.

Pupils provided a list of information about careers and professions of interest and were best matched with a Senior in the mentoring directory that had relevant experience. Mentors were then placed into breakout rooms with their mentees to introduce themselves, ask questions and offer advice in a one to one environment.

After the first session, mentee Izzy, UVI shared with her mentor “I very much enjoyed and appreciated the insights and advice you shared with regards to my upcoming university interviews as well as the possibilities for my degree beyond a traditional engineering career. I hope to keep in touch and I shall keep you informed as to how I get on!”

Other positive feedback has laid the way for the next mentoring session taking place in January:

“I really enjoyed meeting you yesterday and thank you so much for giving up your time to mentor me.” Susana, UVI

“Congratulations to School for creating this mentoring initiative, and a very successful first session last week. It was great to see the different team members, and I enjoyed the discussion with my mentee very much.”

“It was a pleasure to talk to my mentee, for the inaugural Seniors Mentoring session of 2020/2021.  I was very impressed by her sense of purpose and commitment to reaching her long-term career goals, and equally impressed by her articulacy and clarity of self-expression.”

We were delighted to host a diverse range of Alumnae within this new programme, showcasing to the pupils a plethora of available career choices, below are some of the Senior mentors in the programme:

Thank you to all the Wycombe Abbey Alumnae who supported this programme, we look forward to the next mentoring sessions.