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Emerging Women Leaders Program Addresses Gap in Career Mentorship

The pilot program connects doctoral students with female public health experts who offer academic and professional guidance in mentorship circles, workshops, and networking events.

Across the globe, women account for 70 percent of the health workforce, but hold only 25 percent of senior positions. Furthermore, only 28 percent of senior management teams in the field have reached gender parity.

To address gender inequity and foster career progression among women and underrepresented groups, School of Public Health faculty members and doctoral students launched The Emerging Women Leaders (EWL) Program, which offers career mentorship to SPH doctoral students. Funded by a two-year pilot grant from the Office of the Associate Provost for Graduate Affairs, the program has connected SPH doctoral students with female public health leaders through a variety of activities, including networking events and workshops, as well as mentorship circles.

“The idea for Emerging Women Leaders came from my discussions with BUSPH doctoral students who voiced the need for career mentoring to promote more diversity in leadership in public health that included women, among other minorities,” says Veronika Wirtz, professor of global health, EWL faculty lead, and a co-founder of the program along with Salma Abdalla, research fellow and DrPH student, and Katelyn Long (SPH’19), who completed the DrPH program in May 2019 and is a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The students wanted to create a program that provides career mentorship and other networking and skill-building sessions on leadership development throughout their training at BUSPH.”

“Throughout my short career, I have been lucky enough to have both women and men mentors who supported my work and always provided valuable guidance and access to opportunities to advance my work,” says Abdalla. “But over and over again, data have proven that many women, including those working in health, do not access to such mentors. This program aims to create an opportunity for BUSPH doctoral students to find and benefit from mentorship opportunities.”

Over the past 18 months, the EWL workshops have drawn students from all five doctoral programs at SPH, addressing topics such as managing diverse teams for health equity, leadership and hard decisions, work-life integration, sustaining professional momentum through major life events, special challenges for leaders of color and leaders with intersectional identities, and interviews and salary negotiations for women. Although women are encouraged to participate, the program is open to all doctoral students, regardless of gender identity or expression.

Networking events have featured prominent female guest speakers, including Stela Bivol (SPH’04), director of the Center for Health Policy and Studies (PAS Center) and Kayla Laserson, director of CDC India.

The mentorship circles match a small group of students with a female expert based on shared professional interests and goals. All of the participating mentors are SPH alums, including Bivol, Reshma Naik (SPH’13), program director at the Population Reference Bureau, Sarah Alkenbrack (SPH’01), senior health economist at the World Bank, and Monita Baba Djara (SPHxx), assistant professor and director of the Global Health at Loma Linda University.

Long says that the program emphasizes mentorship beyond coursework and dissertations, to addresses the unique concerns that doctoral students face.

“There are so many questions that come up during doctoral training—such as ‘what kind of career do I want to build? How do I pursue work that is meaningful? How do I move from student to leader? How do I juggle my career goals and my personal/family commitments?’” says Long. “These are the things that are ideally suited to talk through with a mentor, but it can be difficult to find mentorship that is able to accommodate this range of topics. We hope this program is just one way to help BUSPH doctoral students engage with thoughtful mentorship as they move through graduate studies, into leadership roles.”

Long credits Wirtz as a valuable mentor of her own, who helped her work through confusing points in her dissertation analysis, and also encouraged her to pursue a postdoctoral position that was “both meaningful and that fit the evolving realities of my life.

“Veronika Wirtz was an incredible mentor to me during my time at BUSPH,” says Long. “I will never forget the day I was in her office, seven months pregnant, and very overwhelmed with dissertation content. She offered to meet with me once a week, and even found a space for me to work at the school so that I could be closer to her and to my professors if I needed to ask questions. It was a game changer.”

In an evaluation of the program, DrPH student Bolanle Banigbe said she appreciated being able to strategize about how to achieve a senior-level position with women who are advanced in their field.

“Speakers presented different perspective about career growth and trajectories, and it was kind of comforting to know that all these highly accomplished women did not have every single step of their career journeys planned out from the beginning,” Banigbe said.

Wirtz says the priority areas of EWL in its second year are program measurement and evaluation, fostering diversity and inclusion, and continuing to incorporate career mentorship for doctoral students into the school’s permanent programming, to achieve gender equity and diversity in high-level positions within the health workforce.

“A lack of diversity in leadership requires changes that go beyond individuals, and require organization reforms,” says Wirtz. “Even though individual champions are important, one thing that I have learned over the course of my career is that it cannot be left to those currently under-represented—women or any other minority in public health leadership—to change the status quo.”

Change, she says, needs to occur at three levels: the regulatory level, with incentives for employers to promote a diverse workforce; the organizational level, with institutional recognition and investment to promote mentorship and diversity in leadership; and the interpersonal level, to “recognize implicit biases, and be an active promoter, rather than a passive observer, of change.

“Individuals currently in leadership positions can be critical to accelerate changing perception, being role models and actively promoting more diverse leadership,” says Wirtz.