Michelle DiEmanuele, one of the most powerful civil servants in Canada, knows how important it is for a woman to have a good business mentor.
That's one reason the 43-year-old Ms. DiEmanuele, Ontario's deputy minister of government services, associate cabinet secretary and secretary of the management board of cabinet, is now a mentor herself, working with Claire Vivier, a sustainability supervisor for the Toronto-based mining company Xstrata Nickel.
"I thought this would be a great opportunity to engage with someone who's in the know," said Ms. Vivier, 31. The two were paired under a new mentoring program offered by the Toronto-based Women's Executive Network (WXN), which matched 92 mentors with 92 protégées in cities across the country.
"Younger women are saying, 'I need a role model. I want somebody who I can look at and aspire to follow,' " said Pamela Jeffery, the 45-year-old founder of the WXN. "Women in their 60s even say they want a mentor," she added.
The mentors were selected from the WXN's annual list of the top 100 most powerful women in Canada. The protégées were selected from about 150 applicants from across the country who were already established in their careers but looking for a leg up. Each applicant indicated the top 15 women she hoped to be mentored by, and those selections were used in the pairing process, Ms. Jeffery said.
"The women being celebrated are really the trailblazers," she said. "The women who want to be mentored see this opportunity."
The program, offered in partnership with Telus, TD Bank Financial Group and TransCanada Pipelines, costs each protégée $1,600. Each of the mentor couples will meet four times over the next year to exchange ideas and advice; the one-on-one mentoring is supplemented by 20 hours of classroom instruction in career development and leadership strategies, Ms. Jeffery said.
At their first meeting, Ms. Vivier and Ms. DiEmanuele found common ground talking about the struggle women face balancing career and family life. Ms. DiEmanuele said it's a careful process that requires constant calibration.
But she noted that, even in male-dominated industries where it can be daunting to go after a senior role, "the biggest challenge as a woman is actually having the confidence sometimes to understand that you don't have to do more to accommodate [the perceptions of others about what women can achieve]"
The WXN program is one of several mentoring options for aspiring female leaders.
The Bank of Nova Scotia, for example, has an in-house mentoring program for female employees looking to advance their careers. The program was a major contributor to the bank recently winning a prestigious international award for putting female managers on the fast track to the executive suite.
Even Toronto's Havergal College, an independent school for girls in kindergarten through Grade 12, offers a program for its graduates that accommodates 15 mentor-protégée pairs from a variety of disciplines, said school spokeswoman Wendy Reid.
Martha Fell, 38, and Lesley Cresswell, 23, are involved in the year-old Havergal program, which is free, and both stress the importance of role models for career women of any age.
"I've found that mentoring gives you that 'give-back' feel," said Ms. Fell, executive director of debt origination at CIBC World Markets in Toronto.
"I'm always looking for opportunities to mentor young women coming into the industry, who are looking for someone beyond a boss or an immediate colleague to confide in, and share with, and bounce ideas off of."
Ms. Cresswell, an analyst who works at CIBC in the global equities business management department, says her relationship with Ms. Fell has helped her to better understand the complexities of the financial business.
"Martha has helped me to meet people, get a heads-up about the industry and decide what I want to do."