Mentoring Circle is a UK Real Estate industry initiative established to increase and promote female talent retention in the built environment through mentoring, networking, and leadership development.
Real Estate Balance’s 2022 DE&I report showed gender balance at board level in the real estate industry has been declining since 2020. Between 2016 and 2022 women represented 40% of the UK real estate workforce for graduate to middle managers, and numbers drop sharply at senior level.
We accept 100 female mentee candidates every year, with applications opening in November, before our 12-month training and events programme kicks-off in March. Our vision is to change the long-term composition, culture, and capacity of the built environment, through improving female talent retention and increasing gender balance at senior leadership level.
To achieve this Mentoring Circle partners each mentee with a mentor from its wide-reaching, influential community of professional women, to provide lived experience, advice and guidance. In addition to this, it provides regular in-person and online thought leadership and networking events that give women the confidence, knowledge, skills and contacts they need to define and achieve success on their own terms. The annual programme includes the two-day Emerging Leadership Academy which runs in September and October and builds mentees’ self-efficacy through developing understanding of the self, leading others and financial, strategic and business acumen.
82% of mentees surveyed, identified that they had achieved a promotion or met a significant goal since joining the programme. A further 80% attributed this directly to the relationship with their mentor and/or the wider programme.
Mentee Thea Rowe, restaurant and leisure leasing at Bruce Gillingham Pollard said about the programme: “Joining Mentoring Circle was a great decision. The application process was extremely straightforward; a point at which you can so easily give up, but the application was simple and easy to answer. The pairing process was very well thought out, my mentor began her career in a similar way to me which meant I felt an instant connection with her which really helped me feel more relaxed in our first session.”
“Mentoring Circle not only provides access to various talks, giving me a broader understanding of the wider property world, but being able to discuss career progression with a knowledgeable mentor has given me a different perspective and room for thought that without this scheme I wouldn’t have thought about.”
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