The Power of Mentorship in IT: Insights from Lingaro Group’s Journey

At the beginning of February 2025, Lingaro Group launched the third edition of the company’s IT Power Women Global Mentoring Program. This ongoing initiative to advance gender equality both in the technology industry has now connected over 35 aspiring female tech talents with experienced women mentors from Lingaro. We asked the program’s lead organizer, DEI & Employer Brand Manager Agata Szacka, to discuss its origins, what she has learned while helping mentors and mentees learn from each other, and what other organizations should keep in mind as they consider running similar initiatives.     

Agata, Lingaro been running the IT Power Women Mentoring Program for three years now. Where did it all start?

It all started because there are fewer women than men in the tech sector. Internally, we are making ongoing efforts to address this underrepresentation and we are doing better than average.

The idea was and is to support women as they begin their IT careers with us or elsewhere. 

How does the program work?

For mentees, the core feature of the program is one-on-one, inspirational guidance from a Lingarian mentor. This guidance covers identifying professional strengths, creating a career road map, and envisioning long-term success. The mentees also connect with each other; the opportunity to share insights and concerns with likeminded peers is much appreciated. In general, the program creates an ideal environment for mentees to strengthen their nascent professional networks. 

We also help mentors succeed within the program. In addition to an opportunity to make a positive impact add a new dimension to their leadership experience, the female Lingarians who volunteer to be mentors get training and support from us on how lead discussions with their mentees. We also spread the word internally and externally about mentors’ participation. This involvement is a great personal brand builder!   

It sounds like the mentors and mentees learn a lot! What about you? Any key takeaways?

Definitely. I have two:

The first is that there is significant demand for female mentorship in IT. 

Immediately after the idea of creating our Global Mentoring Program for aspiring female tech talents popped into my head, I imagined it would be difficult to calculate the return on investment, convince Lingaro leadership to get on board, or maybe even find mentees. And I was totally wrong. 

Not only have I received full support at Lingaro at every step, but I have also consistently seen tremendous market demand for this kind of initiative. When we launched the first two editions of the program, we received around 200 applications to be mentees each time. We are seeing a similar level of interest in the third edition now as we accept applications for it. 

I believe this strong demand is a response to the obstacles women tend to face as a minority in the statistically male-dominated IT world. According to the 2023  “Dziewczyny na Politechniki!” (“Girls at the Polytechnics!” Report), between 2017 and 2022 only around 16% of first-year technology students were women. Soon-to-be female tech professionals have a clear need to discuss their challenges — preferably with role models who faced similar challenges and succeeded. 

I am firmly convinced that responsible employers, universities, and NGOs have an excellent opportunity to step up and help meet this need and make a positive impact by organizing mentoring programs like ours or similar initiatives.

The second is that a sense of belonging and being understood are just as important as mentoring advice. 

I have been quite surprised to see how much emphasis both our mentors and mentees have placed on networking. They have been quite outspoken about their need to create a community and engage in more group discussions, including face-to-face ones. 

For example, former mentee Maja Krajniewska said that our program was

We have responded by organizing additional global networking sessions engaging mentees in plans to strengthen the community of participants in every edition of the program. Even though this aspect of the initiative is not strictly related to mentoring, we will continue giving participants ways to build connections with each other. 

Why should an organization launch a mentoring program? What’s in it for the organization?

It seems like there are endless reasons to launch or take part in a mentoring program. ChatGPT suggested 40 (!) very reasonable benefits for a company and participants. Of course, different organizers and will appreciate different things and have different goals and plans.

From my perspective, however, I would emphasize:

• Making a positive impact. In many ways, doing the right thing is its own reward.
• Orienting team members around purpose. 2016 research from Jennifer Brown suggested that a purpose-oriented worker is 47% more likely to advocate for the company as a corporate ambassador. Organizing a mentoring program can be a perfect way to help support purpose-driven team members get involved in a project they are especially proud of, find a powerful source of motivation, or even identify their calling.
• Building an organization’s reputation. Current and prospective employees, clients, and business partners are paying more attention than ever to whether companies are undertaking projects and other initiatives related to DEI.
  
• Training and inspiring mentors. The ability to steer others towards success is among a leader’s most valuable assets. Your leaders will certainly appreciate a structured opportunity to hone this ability — especially if you provide guidance and training to help them along.   

Narrative-wise, how should an organization frame a female mentoring program? 

The core narrative should be about fixing real challenges, not women. Avoid emphasizing missing skills, limited experience, or the “famous” imposter syndrome said to be common among women. For more context, I recommend Joy Burnford’s book Don’t Fix Women: The Practical Path to Gender Equality at Work.

For employers making a strong commitment to advancing gender equality within the organization, it is crucial to ensure equal opportunities, keep company processes inclusive, and address the gender pay gap. Mentoring programs and similar initiatives aimed at women should always be about finding effective solutions for minority groups to deal with the challenges they face. Potential mentees will prefer to work with organizations who are committed to addressing key challenges from various perspectives and driving systematic change.

Where would you say this kind of mentoring program fits into the “big picture” of industry-wide efforts to promote gender equality?

I think a mentoring program like ours is a good, realistic example of what any IT company can do to help close the gender gap in the industry. Statistics say that there are fewer women than men at most tech companies, but the good news is that there are almost always at least a few experienced women on board. The idea is simply to connect these experienced women with less experienced ones. It may be a small step forward in the grand scheme of things, but every step counts. 

Of course, this sort of mentoring program is not the only example of what can be done to make a positive impact. I look forward to seeing employers, universities, and other organizations create new alliances, platforms, and other mechanisms to advance this important cause. 

Big thanks go to Agata for sharing her insights here! Full details on Lingaro’s IT Power Women Global Mentoring Program are available here. The program is just one of the company’s multiple initiatives to promote sustainability and DEI.