The value of mentors....with Katie Viviers

Katie Viviers has used mentoring throughout her career to progress from working as a genetic counsellor to the CEO of a private specialist centre. Listen in as she walks us through her career and how the support of her long-standing mentor made the transition from clinical work, to a leadership role possible.

Katie’s experience with a number of mentors, sheds light on the invaluable dynamics of mentor-mentee relationships at different points in your career. 

 Lisa and Katie explore:

·      The qualities that make a good mentor

·      The importance of diversity of thought in mentoring

·      The benefits of having multiple mentors, and 

·      The significance of being open to opportunities. 

Katie now reciprocates the support she received, by mentoring others. Through being a mentor herself she shares the importance of setting expectations and understanding the context of the person you're mentoring. 

[END SHOW NOTES]

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to a dog called diversity everyone, and I'm super excited for my guest this week. She's been a long time friend and someone I have admired, and so welcome to the podcast, katie Viviers. Thanks for having me, lisa. Oh, I'm so excited. The main reason I invited Katie on is because she is someone who, generally, I always felt like she knew where she was heading in her career and she also knew the things that would get her there and so one of the things that she's always had, since I've known her mentors and we're going to get into talking a bit about the mentors and she can even categorize them, which I think is really cool. But I wanted to start Katie, why don't you tell us a bit about yourself, maybe where you're working now, where you live, a bit about your family, stuff like that?

Speaker 2: 1:02

Yeah, fantastic Thanks, lisa. Thanks for having me on. I'm really excited about this too. I love talking about mentoring, so I'm looking forward to that. So I am Sydney based. I'm currently working at St Vincent's Clinic and I run three different businesses for the clinic actually, so the clinic itself, and we've got about 340 specialist medical doctors in the building servicing up to 4000 patients a day. So that keeps me nice and busy. And then we also run two charities here. We have St Vincent's Clinic Research Foundation, which does grants for medical research, and we have a beautiful outreach charity called Open Support, which provides programs for women and children escaping domestic violence. It has a community connections program for people experiencing social isolation and also a transport program for people from rural and remote areas to access healthcare in Sydney.

Speaker 2: 1:54

It's a hugely diverse part and I love that. You said that. You know, from your view, it's always looked like I've known where I was going and you know it sounds like. You know, when I hear that, I always think there's something that's being a straight line. I have definitely not followed a straight line.

Speaker 2: 2:09

My career has been really, really interesting and each piece actually is a reflection from a piece of advice I was given from one of my mentors really early on. Eve said to me one day Katie, just be open to opportunity. And I've held on to that throughout my whole career and so, on paper, things that look like a left turn are actually incredible opportunities that have. You know that I've enjoyed. You know there's not a single part of my work history that I don't go. Oh, that was really cool because I did this thing. Or, you know, I got to play with this or meet these people and each one has led me to the next part.

Speaker 2: 2:47

So I actually started clinically. I started my career as a genetic counsellor and I worked with patients to explain their risk of inherited disease, which seems like a very far cry from the journey I've had. But I think fundamentally it all comes back to the same skill set. It's about taking something complex and changing it into the language of the person you're speaking to. So that's ultimately where it is. And you know. And if someone looks at my CV and goes, yes, but how did you go from there to clinical trials, it's the same thing. It's just taking information and translating it for someone else. So each of those is quite different, but I've worked in. So clinical, clinical trials, aged care, disability space, fintech for a brief while which was possibly not my plan, but there's a story for that for perhaps another day and even in the not-for-profit space for organisations like the Starlight Children's Foundation.

Speaker 1: 3:41

So we first met through my husband, aaron, because you were both doing your MBA at the AGSM. That's right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:55

So that was here in Sydney and they do kind of like this sort of really fast get to know, you find five other people and then they're the five people you're going to work with for the whole year. And I was very lucky to meet Aaron, not only for the work that we did together, because I got to meet you, I know.

Speaker 1: 4:13

We've been friends ever since. It's really great. It's been great. But from that very first time I met you, I have this sense that you always wanted to lead businesses and be a CEO. So, yeah, tell me about, I guess, your career path and you're a CEO now. But like, how did you navigate your way into those positions?

Speaker 2: 4:36

Yeah, no, look, that's a great question.

Speaker 2: 4:39

And just in, the one of the things we did as part of our MBA is we had to put a one page CV together and they had this thing about career objective and at the time I was working in a private medical practice, but in a fairly junior type position, and I wrote I want to be the CEO of a private hospital or medical facility. I wrote that at that time and everyone went, oh, you can't write that, don't write that, that's, that's going to go out to the world. And I'm like, yes, it is going out to the world. So you know, I look back now with some relief that I did achieve that thing, but at the time it was huge because it didn't, it was no logical next immediate step. So I did work with mentors at that time, my longest serving serving mentor.

Speaker 2: 5:25

It sounds like a life, life imprisonment, but we actually have a very good relationship, I promise. She and I have been meeting, you know, every couple of months for four years, and I'm going to say just for 15 years, because it makes it sound like I'm super young and you are Definitely yes.

Speaker 2: 5:42

So we've only been meeting for 15 years and you know, over over this time she's she's worked with me to help articulate what it is skills that I bring to a role and she's helped me really sort of, as I said before, being open to opportunities. How do you know what an opportunity looks like? So, in terms of the career progression and things, I don't think there's been a single role that I've had where I've gone oh, I'm really unhappy, I've got to find the next thing. It's gone on. Gee, I'm starting to. Really I've learned so much in this on the opportunity point where I could actually pay attention to things happening around. So it's not that I've necessarily gone hunting for the thing. It's that a point. I've got the business or the project or whatever it is that I've been working on. It's felt stable, it's felt really good and I've got, ah, and that's been enough for me to be aware of opportunity rather than to go what's the next thing? And then from there, you start to have conversations differently if you're open to opportunity and I think that's really good. That being said, I've also had two redundancies, so let's not pretend it's all been easy and smooth sailing along the way, and so the challenges of moving onto the next step after a redundancy too, and mentoring was particularly good in that space. I mean, there've been conversations that I've had.

Speaker 2: 7:05

After a particular bit of news, I rang my mentor. I said we need to meet up. I know it's been a while, but I need to sort of debrief this with you, if that's okay. And she laughed and she said, Katie, pour yourself a glass of wine and call me back in an hour, Like it was some sort of description for good health. But it was right. But her point in saying that was not become an alcoholic that's the only answer. Of course not. It was actually just. Nothing is so bad. You can't just take a minute and just be Like it might feel like the world is ending or it's super critical. Just take a breath, We've got time. It doesn't matter if it's if it might feel urgent, because it's really emotive, but it's actually okay just to slow it down a little bit and that was so useful and that's been such a great grounding thing for me that I've really appreciated as one of her pieces of advice. I don't remember your question now. No, no, no.

Speaker 1: 8:00

That was so good, but I did want to ask that you've had one. I know you've had a number of mentors over your career so far. Yeah, and that first one did you share with her that you'd written down that I want to be a CEO of a hospital or a private health provider, you know, in the future.

Speaker 2: 8:20

I did. Actually. I think I was actually embarrassed, and not because of what I wanted to achieve, nor did I think I couldn't get there eventually, but because of what everyone else had said to me, like, oh, you can't just put such a big goal out there Like that's. You know, that's not how you go. This is in writing, this is going to go to future employers and they're just going to think you're too full of yourself. And so I thought that was really interesting and I actually don't think I shared that with her.

Speaker 2: 8:46

You know, I've certainly shared with her and often she's interestingly, she's often had more confidence in me than I've had in me. You know, there've been times where I've said, oh, you know, I've been offered this role. I just I'm not sure. And she's okay, she doesn't always laugh at me, but she did laugh at me and she said, no, just bring them back and say yes, that's just say yes, you can absolutely do it. You would not be in that position otherwise. And, you know, go for it. And I'm now at a point in my career where I'm, you know, believing that for myself a little bit more. But it's lovely when you've got that type of mentor, who you know because of sort of that long-term relationship, she's understood, I guess she appreciates what my skills are. She doesn't get to see them in action, but she gets to hear the result of you know some of the challenges and how I've overcome them, and so on and so forth.

Speaker 2: 9:36

But going back to your question about the different types of mentors, I think so. My longest mentor, as I said, is informal. You know we made every couple of months More and more involves a meal. It didn't used to but it's a lot as formal. But I've had, I think back to one of the companies that I worked for. They were looking at ways to engage their staff and promote young leaders within the business and they put on a mentoring piece for some of their I don't know emerging leaders for whatever better word, and that's where they took sort of senior executives and next level executives from the business and then they matched them up with the young leaders.

Speaker 2: 10:21

Now, when you have a program like that, you're given a mentor and often and I'm progressing, but bear with me often with a mentor, the relationship that you form is so important. You wanna feel like you're actually a match and we'll come back to that, but just don't let me forget about that. Anyway. So I was given from someone in a completely different business unit, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but that person had a really different agenda about how they saw themselves doing this and it was an opportunity for them as well as it was for me, and so, while I got value from that, it's not been my favorite type of mentoring that I've experienced, because I felt that that was sort of was running more along their agenda and I really believe that a mentor-mentee relationship should actually be about the mentee's goals.

Speaker 2: 11:06

Now I sit firmly in both camps, as a mentor and a mentee. I do now mentor on a voluntary basis for a couple of different organizations, so a couple of years of experience has taught me that that was an interesting experience from what mentoring could look like, but it was great in terms of learning more about the organization I was working with at the time and navigating some of the politics in that space. So from that point of view, I could not have got that from external yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Sorry. Well, I was just gonna say I had one of those experiences where I'd been matched with a mentor and you didn't have any choice, and I can remember being really excited about who I'd been matched with. It was actually an external program to the organization and a really fantastic, I thought, hr leader and I was working in HR, but turned out to be more about his agenda and him telling me what I should be doing rather than listening to me and trying to understand my frustrations and then offering thoughts and suggestions, and so I think that's when mentoring can go wrong and get a bad name, when that kind of stuff happens.

Speaker 2: 12:18

Yeah, and it is a position of power like, even though it's there for the mentee and I think it's hard to speak up as a mentee, and I think that that's something that I would say to anyone who's stepping into mentoring for the first time is share your expectations with your mentor, so if it starts to go off the rails A, you can notice it's going off the rails and B it's actually okay to say look, I'm not getting out of this relationship, what I thought I was getting out of and find someone until you find that good match. I mean, I'm incredibly lucky to have had a mentor the same mentor through most of my career. That's pretty unusual, I think, actually, yeah, how did you find her?

Speaker 1: 12:58

And I guess, not only how did you find her, but how did you know that you wanted someone like her?

Speaker 2: 13:05

So she was actually the mother of someone I went to school with and it came about because I had said I kind of remember what I was reading at the time.

Speaker 2: 13:16

It is more than 15 years ago now, so I'll forget that one, but it was. I thought that I needed something that I couldn't get from my studies and the people around me Not that they were deficient in any way, but I needed something. I was going in a different direction to some of my friends who were either staying clinical or had different careers entirely. And I remember saying to this one of my friends that I was just. I wanted actually someone who'd done senior leadership, I wanted someone who'd been successful and I really actually wanted a woman for my first mentor. So I had, you know, while I wasn't fixed criteria, I kind of had a pretty good idea what I was after. And she actually went. Oh, I think my mom does that professionally and anyway. So I knew her as my friend's mom and then I said to her look, this is what I'm looking for. And it turns out she has a phenomenal board career and you know it's highly sought after and highly respected. You know executive and board member from multiple businesses across Australia. So you know, but I lucked out there and it's interesting because if I hadn't said it was just one of those conversations that if I hadn't said that to my friend in such way, she wouldn't have thought of a mother, you know, that's not the relationship you have with your, your friend's parents initially anyway. So from that point of view it's sort of I got lucky. I think it's probably the answer on that.

Speaker 2: 14:39

I have, though, in years since I have gone out and sought other mentors in addition to again for different things. So you know, there was a period after one of my redundancies where I needed to prepare for career transition a little bit differently and I needed someone who could help me. In a way that was, I think I'm going to go with more formal now, okay, and if I had, you know, talked about sort of the friendship that developed with my other mentor, I needed something that I was going to be time bound and I wanted it, you know, to achieve some pretty specific things in a relatively short piece of time. And so I actually did some research online. I looked at different groups and things, networking groups, and I found, funnily enough, a lady. This wasn't a woman wasn't my requirement for this time round. But she indeed is a female and I had a paid engagement with her for almost 12 months, frequently in the first six months and then less frequently in the second, and that was really around again, sort of that articulation and confidence.

Speaker 2: 15:42

And because after a redundancy, as I'm sure many of your listeners would have experienced, you know, even if you know it's genuine and you know that all the things are there, you still your confidence takes a knock, even if you know that it's a good thing. So to be able to just sort of sound, have a sounding board against that and ideas that you haven't thought of and someone close to you hasn't thought of, so that they sort of spark new ideas, even if you go, oh, like one of the things she said, oh, why don't you try visiting a business like this and just be able to have experiences with their clients? I thought, well, that's interesting, but it's not helpful to me. But it sparked another idea about how I could connect with those businesses and so that was really valuable. So that was quite different. As I said, time-bound in that space, but perfect for the timing that I had in my career and what I was after.

Speaker 1: 16:34

Yeah, I wondered about how are you? I guess how your mentors have meant that your career has been successful rather than maybe not, like other with their turning points. When mentors have sparked something for you or introduce you to someone that meant you went in a different direction.

Speaker 2: 17:07

Yeah, there's probably two or three that immediately come to mind when you say that. So right on early on, after I started with my longer term mentor, I moved out of clinical work, I started to do project work and I was doing a business integration element. It was a gain another story and that was great and that was coming to a close and it was. She actually said to me okay, what's next now? Like, what is your plan? And I enjoyed it, it was thrilling, it was a new skill set, you know, like massive learning curve but really fantastic opportunity that I just had. And so I was kind of still writing the high five from that and it wasn't until she went, okay, but where's what's next? And I had to go oh, yeah, what is next? Good question. So that was a really good thing. And how sometimes it's helpful to have someone else give you a bit of a poke, say, okay, cool, you did something really cool, so can you do another really cool thing? That's really good. And so I have very you know, I remember that sort of almost being a bit of an aha moment. I'm like, oh wait, yeah, you're right, it's going to be different tomorrow, because that thing's almost complete. And then another one of the ones I would have had, sort of trying to think of a way to describe this. Actually, I'll give you the most recent one.

Speaker 2: 18:33

Actually, when this, this opportunity, came up, I was, I was headhunted for the role and I was really enjoying where I was. You know it was. It was a fantastic team, small team, but I was really enjoying it. Also in a clinical space, and I got tapped on the shoulder for this and, weirdly, the recruiter rang me at like 6pm on a Saturday night and I was out to dinner with my family and I remember thinking I'll just take this call. It was like it was kind of like what anyway? And I stepped out of the, out of the restaurants and I said, oh yeah, this sounds like you, we really love you to put in an application that sounds really interesting Anyway, and went back, sat down with dinner, finished my dinner and then the next day I went.

Speaker 2: 19:15

That actually happened. That's a really weird call and it is in this day and age of you know. You can't quite trust his calling. You know, you know, is this some sort of scam or the cameras going to pop out? Anyway, and sure enough, there was an email from a very legitimate firm sitting in my inbox and I rang my mentor and I said look, I've been offered this job. This is my first CEO role.

Speaker 2: 19:37

And she said it's fantastic. Why are you calling me? Do you need a reference? And I said no, no, no, I'm not sure if I'm ready. Like, how do I take the step into running the ship, driving the ship to directing the ship? And she said Teddy, you've been doing that. And she was able to reflect back at me some of the previous conversations we have that I went oh, you're absolutely right, I am, and this is exciting. It's scary but it's exciting, and I felt like I. It was great to hear from her that validation is the wrong word, but I guess support. You know that someone who had seen where I've been and where I was coming from, I went. You know there's a good reason. They're tapping you on the shoulder. Go for it, and I have not regretted it. I absolutely love this role. I've been here for two and a half years now and I think it's fantastic and I'm sure she'll come at some point and go. Okay, what's next? But I'm not there yet, just in case anyone's listening. I'm very happy here.

Speaker 1: 20:35

I'll ask you about that and we'll come back to that.

Speaker 2: 20:38

Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's great. And I think one of the things you know say about defining moments I love and am very good at navigating through change and challenge, you know, be that, you know major stresses that an organization faces or just large change in culture or people, and so that's sort of not only am I good at doing that, but I really enjoy it, and I think that's sort of that being open to opportunity part is when things become smooth sailing again or even to a mature space. That's the part that I start to go, okay, right, I'm not near that at this point. I'm loving it. There's lots of things going on here.

Speaker 1: 21:16

Um, what I also admire about you, Katie, is that you've always had mentors and you've always leaned on people for advice and support, but you're at a stage in your career now where you're giving back and you're mentoring other people. So tell me about that and tell me why it's important for you to do that.

Speaker 2: 21:37

Um, yeah, I, I enjoy it and I it's a super for the. To me, mentoring is about the mentee. So you know, when I'm in that space as a mentee and I'm talking, I'm focused on my goals. But the privilege to be able to sit with someone as a mentor and to to really focus on them, I get a lot out of that, I learn through that and, as you say, it's about listening and hearing their goals.

Speaker 2: 22:03

Um, so I've been mentoring for Macquarie University's Lucy mentoring program for about 10 years now and that program, which is run out of a number of universities in Australia, is designed to help final year or penultimate year female business students, primarily set them up for transition out of university. It runs for think about nine months. So I've had a number of mentees over the years and it's it's great. There's a check in at the beginning and a check in at the end and what happens in the middle is up to you and your mentee. And so I have had a huge variety of mentees. I've had people who all wonderful women, who are just going to be the most incredible assets or our assets to their organizations, but I've had mature students.

Speaker 2: 22:51

I've had overseas students who don't have any network at all and are learning a culture at the same time, and to post grad, undergrad and anything anything and everything in between, and the thing that I say when I first made any of my mentees is actually I'm here for you and I have no preconceived ideas about what yours is going to look like compared to the person I had last year or the year before that or whatever. And so we actually spent, you know, quite a bit of time helping. I spent time helping that mentee decide what it is they want to get out of the session. How can I help them in this, in this moment and sometimes that's. You know, I had a lady who was re-entering the workforce after 10 years of looking after her children and she just wanted she had all the technical skills, she had all the confidence, she just needed to refresh her network. So she was after me to help her, introduce her to people and come up with a strategy for that Can do Very different from the person who is too nervous to say hello and is terrified of working and walking into an office for the first time Because for some reason in their head they've built it up to be this crazy thing you see in the movies, where you know people in power suits running around who don't talk to anyone, you know, only smile at coffee time or something, and you know these, these ideas that people have, and it's just taking the time to unpack those.

Speaker 2: 24:17

You know we set a couple of goals with for nine months I tend to do sort of two to three goals, anything more than that. It's not going to happen like they wanted to. And even then, there my personal style is to say we set the goals, life happens, and if something else comes up because you are literally learning at this point, it's okay, as long as it's conscious, okay, and we can make it a different goal, as long as you're choosing to do the other thing. And if you go, oh, this thing's come up, but I still want to do that, we're going to have to make a trade off and that's again that sort of that's life too. And so you know it's very different mentoring a younger student who is yet to have their first full time job, you know, compared to someone who's been in there for a little while, and that's my other type and I don't know how much time we have, lisa, but I could talk forever, as you probably know.

Speaker 2: 25:08

But I'm also mentoring through the St Vincent's public hospital here in Sydney at the moment and I'm through their program and I'm working with a I don't want to identify her because she doesn't know I'm doing this, a let's just call her a senior allied health person and for her it's about, you know, demonstrating things in her team that she wants to be able to do, to grow her leadership skills, and that's that's a really different model again, because that's in the workplace and that's kind of, you know, the opposite of what I was describing before. From when I was matched with somebody, she's been matched with me and you know we're working through that. But I'm conscious of that based on my experience.

Speaker 1: 25:53

Yeah, you've. You've spoken about a few things there that really resonated with me. I joined a mentoring program last year as a mentor and I certainly went in with some expectations about how I could add value to any mentee who I was matched with. And you know, very quickly worked out in the first couple of meetings that what my expectations were and what value I could add was not going to be any way helpful to the mentee who I was matched with, and so part of it for me was learning that I have to meet them where they are and how they help them where they are. But then the other side was you know, next time I might say I don't think I can help because it's not something I'm passionate about, so it wasn't something I felt like I could add anything to in her situation. So yeah, and I compare that to this year I've got my new mentee is much more where my strengths are, but being really conscious of what she needs help with, but still being able to use my strengths has been really my opening.

Speaker 2: 27:08

Yeah, it's, you're absolutely right and that can be a challenge. You know that's there's not every time. Is a, is a is a perfect fit, and you know particularly where. You know one student who was in study actuarial studies and you know like I've got some skills but I'm not sure I'd go that deep. And you know absolutely brilliant young woman and she wanted to go to deep there. So the opportunity that I had was to connect her with people in my network for her to have some more conversations with, rather than trying to be all the things to that person, because you can't be everything, it's not. You know we've got no superpowers. You know you are a mentor and now, if you go, you have all this ability to solve world peace. It's largely it's reflecting back to that person and supporting them in what they have to do.

Speaker 1: 28:01

So yeah, it is a challenge.

Speaker 2: 28:02

I agree yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:04

What? What do you think makes a good mentor? Like when you look at your mentors that have been so helpful.

Speaker 2: 28:11

What makes a mentor, I think, someone who is focused on you when they're with you, and what I mean by that is they are in that moment with you and they're able to listen. And it's not suggesting it's any kind of counseling relationship, but it's not you're not trying to steer it in a particular way. Or just because you had an experience yesterday where this thing happened doesn't mean that that experience is going to help the person in front of you. So it's just being able to just hold those thoughts and go okay, great, what do you want out of this? And to provide some structure to the conversation. I think it's really useful as well. I mean, in case you haven't picked up already, I can honestly talk underwater that's.

Speaker 2: 28:50

That's a thing in my family and it was out for me a mentor who can go okay, yeah, now back to here, that I wouldn't get as much value out of things, and either, with the mentor. To be honest, you know that wouldn't be fun for anybody yeah, yeah. So, but I think you have to have you have to be able to click with the person you know. So both my inform one and the one that I paid you know that paid engagement that I was talking about I did my research and I found someone that I really wanted to work with and she had worked in similar industries so I knew I didn't have to teach a language around the technical skills, which I think is also helpful. So sometimes you want someone who's outside of what you're doing and sometimes you want someone who's got at least a connection to it. For that, for some of the challenges and politics of what might be involved, yeah, Now I wanted to come back to your current role.

Speaker 2: 29:42

Yes.

Speaker 1: 29:44

Because I think I, like I had a goal in my career from when I can remember my first moving to Sydney and I was traveling and I used to go and work in London for two weeks at a time for the company I was with and it was the first time I'd realized there was. There was this thing called an expat and you could live and work overseas, and I just thought that was the best, and so I never wrote it down, but I always had in my head I wanted to live and work overseas and after some a couple of failed attempts, I finally achieved that. And I can remember sitting on a balcony in Singapore and a hot, humid night, looking at all the lights around me and being so proud of myself that I had achieved that goal. You know really, oh shit, I did that, that's amazing, but also yeah, but oh shit, what's next?

Speaker 1: 30:41

Yeah, that's gonna do it, and I guess you know I know you won't have fully formed what's next, but where you know you've achieved this goal that you set so long ago. Yeah, where's your head going next? Where? What's the next thing to learn? I guess?

Speaker 2: 30:59

That's a really good question. You know, I haven't yet spent much time thinking about that. I probably should. As I said, I've got some really great things that I'm tackling here. You know, it's unusual in that I'm running three entities, so I have each one has its challenges. It means that no, two days are like you know, it's bubbling. I have growth plans for those, but in terms of, I guess, what next steps would look like, I actually don't know. I think I think I would like to work. No, I actually don't know. It's okay and it's okay not to know, I think, at this point, I'll check in with you in a little while whether that's changed.

Speaker 2: 31:47

No, I'm enjoying. I still have things to learn here. I have I'm very lucky that I have a very experienced chair on my board and I'm learning from her as well, and it's great being part of this large network that the clinic sits within, and I'll be open to opportunity when I'm ready, I think.

Speaker 1: 32:10

Yeah, I have to get your mentor onto that. Get you thinking.

Speaker 2: 32:15

Oh she will. I've got to be careful. I'm not ready yet. I don't want to have that got the sofa. No, she's very good at it.

Speaker 1: 32:25

Yeah, so what would be your advice to women around mentoring? Like, if there was one thing that you wanted other people to know about having a mentor, what would that be Get?

Speaker 2: 32:35

a mentor, absolutely, get a mentor and it doesn't matter if you end up with multiples over time. I think that's okay. I think what I found with a long, like my really long term mentoring relationship that's unusual, you know, I think sort of. You know, while you do want some degree of depth in the relationship because it can see you transition from different skill sets, I think you know, I think probably up to three years it'd be like a more for a long term relationship for a mentor, I think don't be afraid to ask in that work is who's already doing mentoring, because even if the person you speak to is not the one you want to mentor chances on, they know people already who do that. There is. There are opportunities for paid engagements through a lot of the particularly important things. I know in Australia, women on boards exist and they do paid mentoring engagements, excuse me. And then there are others that are, you know, like craft group, like industry specific groups that exist. And then there are also people who do it because they just enjoy doing it and I think, if you can find strike a balance, I happen to.

Speaker 2: 33:54

My more successful relationships have been with women by chance, not by design, other than my first mentor and talk. I think mixed agendas is good. It gives you a different perspective. Like I'm pretty into the converted here, but wherever you can fit, diversity of thought is really helpful in your careers, particularly if you feel like you're stuck or don't know how to take that next step. I think that that's a really beneficial thing. And then I guess I have to finish with be open to opportunity, because it's some of the best advice I've ever been given.

Speaker 1: 34:27

Thank you so much, katie. I have been wanting to ask you about your mentors for so long, and so this was a great opportunity to not only ask all the questions, but record them for everyone else, so thank you so? Much.

Speaker 2: 34:40

It's a pleasure, Lisa. Thank you.