Empowering Girls Through Mentorship And Visibility with Illana Raia
Illana Raia, founder of Être, discusses how her organization provides access and visibility for girls to meet female leaders in various industries, from fashion to STEM. Être connects girls with mentors through in-person company visits and school programs, allowing them to ask substantive questions and gain exposure to diverse career paths. Illana provides advice on how girls and young women can proactively seek out mentorship opportunities, including through cold outreach and leveraging their existing networks.
She Believed She Could™ Podcast · Illana Raia, Allison Walsh
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Show Notes
Named one of the first 250 entrepreneurs on the Forbes Next 1000 List and recognized twice by Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas, Illana Raia is the founder and CEO of Être - a mentorship platform for girls. Believing that mentors matter as early as middle school, Illana brings girls directly into companies they choose to meet female leaders face to face. Illana is chair-elect of the International Space Station U.S. National Lab Education Subcommittee, serves on the National Girls’ Collaborative Project Champions Board and was recently appointed to the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine Board of Governors. Illana contributes to the Forbes Business Council, has authored 60+ articles for HuffPost, Ms. Magazine and Thrive Global, and her award-winning book Être: Girls, Who Do You Want To Be? was released on Day of the Girl 2019. Her second best-selling book, The Epic Mentor Guide, arrived during Women’s History Month 2022, sparking a weekly conversation on LinkedIn with The Epic Mentor Newsletter. Prior to launching Être in 2016, Illana was a corporate attorney at Skadden Arps in NYC and a guest lecturer at Columbia University. She graduated from Smith College and the University of Chicago Law School, and remains unapologetically nerdy.
Memorable Moments:
"Mentorship doesn't need to be decades long and for your whole career, a mentor moment is really valuable."
"The fearless ask, I think is the first step. And the very worst they'll say is no. And no might not mean no, forever."
“There is no company out there that can't close that confidence gap by a little bit by offering their time giving mentor advice. There is no woman who can't spend a little bit of her time with somebody.”
“I'm a big believer in the cold email, or the cold DM for the girls, I can't tell you how much happened with Être, because I sent one cold email every day to a woman I didn't know.”
Connect with Illana:
Être Website: https://www.etregirls.com/
Être Instagram: @etregirls
Illana's Website: https://www.illanaraia.com/
Illana's Instagram: @illanaraia
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