How can we empower women athletes to generate long-term value for the world?

In the first article of this series on women athletes and leadership, we explored how women athletes could unlock their entrepreneurial spirit to achieve business excellence in a second or dual career. This article will discuss the power of mentoring, not only in helping them reach that goal, but also in equipping them with the tool kit to offer long-term value to business and society.

For any professional, having access to a mentor provides a valued career boost, both in the short and long term. An experienced and influential supporter can offer trusted advice, while also boosting one’s personal development.

For women athletes making the challenging transition from professional sport to the business world, having a mentor is life-changing. That is why mentorship is at the core of the EY Women Athletes Business Network (WABN). We want to develop the next generation of business leaders, and the mentor–mentee relationship is key to tapping into the confidence, single-mindedness, passion, leadership and resilience that women athletes are known to possess.

Throughout the year-long journey to develop their leadership potential, WABN participants work closely with a mentor to help them be as successful in their second or dual career as they have been in their first. So, what do mentors instill in women athletes to allow them to shine in business?

Direction and strategy

As women athletes’ identities are often completely tied to sport, they can struggle with the pivot to business, especially when it comes to making decisions about what they can do and the directions to take.

Stasia Mitchell, EY Global Entrepreneurship Leader and WABN Mentor, describes the transition as “a huge challenge as well as a huge opportunity” for them. Women athletes tend to have numerous opportunities, which they can succeed in because of their inherent “courage and curiosity,” provided they have the right support, she says.

Mitchell has found her mentee, Paralympian swimmer Annabelle Williams, to be “highly self-driven, goal-orientated, poised for success, determined, resilient and able to handle failure,” all of which are key qualities of top performers in any organization. With guidance on career strategy and encouragement to use time and energy to discover her best path, she believes Williams can obtain peak performance in business, too.

Williams, who won gold for Australia at the London 2012 Paralympic Games, says Mitchell instilled her with great confidence, encouraging her to embrace her identity as a senior figure. As a corporate lawyer, speaker, sports commentator, business owner and holder of nine top roles in various sport-related organizations, she has been able to consider her future path and think more critically about how to be a leader.

“WABN helped me understand that I’ve got to make business decisions irrespective of what people think,” she says. “I learned to identify how to communicate best with different personality types and think outside the box, so I developed in both a concrete business and personal sense.”

New mindset and perspective 

Fellow mentee Aki Yamada, an Olympian hockey player representing Japan at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, says her mentor has helped her understand her potential. She joined WABN when her training was halted in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Months without hockey prompted her to dream of making a meaningful contribution to business and society on retirement from sports, but she was disheartened not knowing how to go about it.

“I thought I would have to build up my career from zero because I have no experience outside of hockey, but my mentor taught me how to use my sporting career in the business world,” she says. “I have had unique experiences that I can use to my advantage.”

To her, success in a second career also means she can be a role model for younger generations: something she believes is important in order for more women athletes to make the transition to the corporate or entrepreneurial world.

Creating role models — including via mentorship — is also a key part of closing Japan’s gender gap, and advancing gender equality, a long-term goal of the EY organization.

With such potential impact on society, Tokuya Takizawa, EY Japan Regional Accounts Leader, and Asia-Pacific Sustainability Leader, says WABN is “deeply connected” to the EY organization’s concept of long-term value.

Since joining the program as a mentor, he has seen firsthand how it has transformed women athletes’ mindsets so they can achieve business excellence.

“The common skills they have include mental and physical toughness,” he says, adding that if they can channel their unique experience and expertise from their time in sport toward a new challenge then they will have an immense drive to achieve their goals.
 

Collective and shared power

For mentee and Olympian weightlifter Rika Saito, WABN was the catalyst to nurturing her imagination about work post-sport and getting the know-how about the business world. She was chosen as a Japanese participant on the global program, where she interacted with a mentor, and athletes of Summer and Winter sports based around the world.

Sharing experiences and insights with fellow mentees in similar situations made her realize that she is not alone in the challenges she faces, giving her a sense of sisterhood while widening her perspective.

Rika Saito

“It made me realize that some things in life are universal,” she says, adding that the participants have given her the drive to succeed. “I feel like I have a strong cohort all over the world who support me.”

Mentees and mentors alike also benefit from the mutual exchange of know-how, skills and approaches to work. WABN shows that two heads are indeed better than one.

Yoko Kudo, Ernst & Young ShinNihon LLC Partner and WABN Executive Sponsor, says the program is designed so that the EY professionals who do the mentoring — and the mentees themselves — can “be the changemakers” in society, now and in the future.

“We mentors provide women athletes with support on entrepreneurship, leadership, networking, setting goals and so on, but women athletes in return give us great energy. It’s win-win,” she says, adding that mentors and mentees have a lot to learn from each other.

Mitchell agrees, noting that being a mentor has allowed her to grow via “the power of playing out scenarios” with Williams, who offers a unique perspective. The pair see the value of the initiative, with Williams observing that it helps guide her — in her career and her life.

WABN’s impact is multiplied as it is just one of the many parts of the EY ecosystem driving gender equality and a better working world. EY is committed to delivering the program in the long term, which Kudo says is important for WABN’s sustainability.

With such long-term value in the mentorship program, WABN graduates are poised to achieve business excellence and continue to obtain value from the mentor–mentee relationships for a long time to come.