AmCham Hosts Graduation Ceremony for 2022/23 WGO Peer-Mentoring Programme
AmCham was delighted to hold the graduation ceremony for our 2022/2023 Women in Global Organisations (WGO) Peer-Mentoring Programme in Salesforce Dublin last month.
Over the course of the 7-month bespoke Programme, which is aimed at women in senior leadership positions, AmCham was honoured to be able to work with 171 participants representing 79 companies, to help them to advance their leadership skills.
The WGO Peer-Mentoring Programme, which is sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company, allows women to work across 5 modules in Orientation & Networking, Influence & Persuasion, Horizon Scanning, Visibility and Change. Participants work in small cross company, cross sectoral groups to explore practices, compare experiences and gain new perspectives and ideas.
During the ceremony, graduates heard from Aisling O’Sullivan, Associate Director Global AP and Finance Project Management at OTC Therapeutics Inc about her experiences in the programme. She said, “Firstly, this has been a transformative experience for me. The lessons I learnt from the very first session and the encouragement I received from the programme's peer group encouraged me to seek what I wanted from senior leadership allowing me to achieve a promotion.”
She continued “Secondly, the greatest thing about this programme has been the ability to meet women from different industries, it has been so inspiring to see the challenges we face together. And thirdly, this is not the end, it is just the end of the beginning. We can continue to stay in contact, I hope we will all stay in touch and continue to learn from one another."
The 2022/2023 WGO Programme ran across 3 different regions, the Southern region, Western region and Eastern region, with each group designed to allow participants to lean from an exceptional group of peers.
Mary Gallagher Director, Employee Success Business Partner at Salesforce and graduate of AmCham’s Emerging Leaders Development Programme spoke on the benefits of networking across sectors. She said, “The Emerging Leaders Development Programme was my first experience with an AmCham programme. It allowed me to network with people from different industries, and it’s so great to see so many of you here today from across so many different industries."
She also spoke about the Salesforce Women’s Network which shares the goal of the WGO programme to provide valuable peer to peer connections for women in business. She mentioned the importance of providing these programmes saying: “We surveyed over 80 groups to see what they needed, we were asked to give networking opportunities to allow female leadership to form connections”.
Graduates also heard from keynote speaker Anne Marie Coleman, Chief of Staff to the CPO at The Coca-Cola Company. She posed the question to attendees: “How many other women are you pulling up with you?”
She continued: “This is something I am very passionate about. I would say particularly in the last 10 years I’ve worked hard to support and encourage female talent to apply for promotions to move outside their comfort zone to take on new roles, to say yes!”
AmCham would like to echo Anne Marie’s parting words to attendees “Congratulations on your graduation and I hope you achieve your best self no matter what that may be.”
Congratulations to all of our 2022/2023 WGO Peer-Mentoring Programme graduates!
You can find out more about our WGO Peer-Mentoring Programme here.
For photos from the 2022/2023 WGO Peer-Mentoring graduation ceremony click here and you can find a video from the day here.