Katerina Zacharia, PromaxBDA’s vice president of industry relations, collaborates with industry leaders in the PromaxBDA member community to create training, professional development and leadership programs designed to build the next generation of diverse leaders for the entertainment media marketing industry.

One of the keystones of these programs is mentorship, no matter on which level the program is working. From PromaxBDA’s Promo Pathway, which gives students the tools of storytelling, to Executive Mentorship, which pairs senior level executives with mid-level professionals, to Thrive, which trains the next generation of leaders, mentorship and cross-industry relationships are important components. Here’s why:

Brief: Obviously mentorship is something that’s important to you, since it’s included in so many of PromaxBDA’s development programs. What do you like about mentorship? Why do you think it’s important?

Zacharia: Mentorship is a process of collaborative self-reflection. I read a quote about mentorship a few years back that the goal of a mentor is to shorten the learning curve that we all have. We all make mistakes in our careers; mentors help you make those mistakes in a shorter period of time, and learn from them more quickly. They do that by reflecting on their own experience and sharing what they learned — the wisdom that comes from experience.

There’s no road map to success, no one has the key. People have stories to tell. Those stories provide the insights and sometimes the guiding perspective.

My mentor will say one sentence to me, and it will percolate in my mind. Maybe a month later, the actions I took as result of his insight will create huge change in my life. It’s not like a pebble that you toss in the water causing a ripple effect, it’s more like a boulder creating waves that transform the shoreline. Mentors have that capacity.

Brief: What do you do, what does PromaxBDA do, that makes these mentorships successful?

Here’s our secret sauce: We have an application so it’s not like people are just putting in their name and title. They have to answer a fair number of questions and if they don’t finish the application, we don’t accept them. We want people who are driven, passionate, high-potential and committed to their growth. It starts with that application.

We then interview both the mentees and mentors. We ask the mentees why mentorship and why now? If they say, ‘I just want to learn from someone and get exposure.’ We say, ‘this isn’t right for you right now.’ But if they say something to the effect of, ‘I’m a senior manager but I want to become a creative director. I know I need to first develop my leadership style and presence. Part of that is figuring which ladder I want to climb.”

When they are that specific and we have the right mentor to form the match, we accept them into the program. This program benefits the mentees who know what they want to accomplish during the year-long relationship. And, it makes for a more rewarding experience for the mentors. The mentors can have impact if they have a clear understanding of their mentee’s goals. Some formal mentorship programs get a bad rap because they aren’t natural mentorships.. It’s awkward.

We interview all the mentees, take down their stories, learn about struggles and passions and find out what they are excited about.

After that, we interview the mentors, and ask them the same kind of things. “What’s your story? How did you get to be SVP or CMO? What are you most passionate about?”. Once we do that, we can start pulling threads together.

We’re an industry that is anchored in storytelling and we use story to make the match.

That qualitative approach of making the matches does so much for us running a program. It’s a very thoughtful match that’s rare. You don’t find mentorship programs that go to that extent. And we never make more than 50 matches a year. Once you do, you compromise the quality of the match.

Brief: Once you’ve paired the mentee with his or her mentor, what’s the process?

We have a hard program launch, which takes place the afternoon before the annual conference in June. Before launch, the pairs have one meeting or phone call and then they come to the program launch, which is all about how to build a collaborative mentoring relationship.

Last year, I didn’t even have to do an icebreaker because as soon as I opened the doors, the room was on fire. There was nothing awkward about it. We do that on purpose. We want to build a professional community around mentorship and it all starts with the quality of our matches. If the match is strong, if there are common threads between the two, than it’s easy for them to start talking.

Brief: What would you say are the keys to having a successful mentorship?

—Circle back with your mentor. When a mentor gives you feedback, you need to make sure to circle back so your mentor knows you are listening and they have impact. People, mentors, want to bring meaning – have impact. Mentees need to be transparent about how they are evolving and how their mentor has influenced their growth.

—Make sure you drive the relationship. Don’t take it personally if the mentor keeps canceling—they are busy. Build a relationship with his or her assistant, and make sure he or she knows you are a priority.

—Always be a prepared with a list of questions or things you want to address when you meet your mentor. You can even send an email to your mentor before the meeting so the mentor so can think about what you want to talk about ahead of time.

—It’s not therapy. Mentors are professional sounding boards, they are not coaches and they are not psychologists. Obviously, if the partnership evolves into sponsorship and advocacy, that’s great, but that’s for the mentor to allow.

—Approach mentorship with a heightened sense of self-awareness. Be receptive to hearing candor. We all have the stories we tell ourselves and sometimes, we don’t know we are stuck in them.

—Be focused on what you want to accomplish. Be respectful of the mentor’s time. Listen, really listen.

Brief: What are PromaxBDA’s different mentorship opportunities? How can people take advantage of them?

Our mentorship program is an inclusion program. We overindex in gender and diversity among the mentees.

The way we design all the programs is to make sure they connect back and forward. If a CMO is mentoring a creative director, we want to make sure that creative director will mentor emerging talent from our Promo Pathway or academic partners. The programs are designed to connect people across all the career stages in our membership.

PromaxBDA offers three programs that include forms of mentorship:

Promo Pathway is a one-year preditor training program produced in partnership between PromaxBDA and Santa Monica College. Combining the academic training with industry preparation, the partners work together to build the next generation of writer/producer/editors for the entertainment marketing industry. Part of Promo Pathway is pairing past mentees in the Executive Mentorship Program with a student to get feedback as they work through their final portfolio project and transition into the creative marketing workforce.

Executive Mentorship, which launches at the annual conference in June, is a best-in-class mentorship program structured around a leadership curriculum and mentorship training PromaxBDA designed to serve its member community. The matching process is happening now.

And Thrive is a leadership program that gives creative professionals the skills they need to move to the next level of management and leadership in their careers. PromaxBDA is accepting applications to Thrive now.

For more information on PromaxBDA’s professional development programs, go to PromaxBDA.org or reach out to Zacharia at katerina@promaxbda.org or at 310-789-1523.

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