Launched in October 2020, the Quantcast Mentorship Program was developed to help our employees get more support to develop their skills, learn from mentors, and have access to executives who paved the way and now have successful careers.
Since then, we’ve received applications from employees across the globe and have paired them with mentors endorsed by Quantcast’s leadership team. The program runs every six months and invites employees, both mentors and proteges, to learn from each other and grow their skills. The mentors coach, guide, and challenge proteges to go the extra mile and get clarity on what’s important to them and why. The proteges self-reflect, embrace stretching their comfort zone, and come with an open mind to learn and thrive in their careers.
We’ve asked three of Quantcast’s mentors who took part in the program to share what motivated them to become a mentor and what makes a mentorship relationship successful. We hope this offers some inspiration to others to reach out and find a mentor who can help you further develop your career.
Shreeni Iyer
Shreeni is a director of engineering at Quantcast, managing teams in Platform Engineering since 2017 across Singapore and the UK. Shreeni combines a keen ear with a willingness to share his experiences and provide candid thoughts on dealing with challenges that proteges face in their careers.
What motivated you to become a mentor?
I have benefitted by having mentors in my life and I believe I can pay it forward by mentoring others. Mentoring is one of the best ways to create future leaders, whether it be functional leaders or people leaders. I also feel that having worked at Quantcast for as long as I have, I can provide new perspectives in proteges’ careers and lives through my conversations with them.
What is one thing you learned while in this program?
I have learnt to be respectful of the vast gap between where I come from (in terms of experience and tenure) and where my proteges are. The challenges they face are very different than mine and I have learnt to empathize with where they are coming from and where they are. Each protege is unique and you can’t pre-bake your way to mentoring success.
In your opinion, what makes a mentorship relationship successful?
A mentorship relationship should be based on listening, empathy, and candid conversations. The more of these 3 ingredients, the better your chances of leaving some impact.
Valerie Junger
Valerie Junger is SVP, Chief People Officer at Quantcast, based in our San Francisco office. She is a positive and supportive mentor who likes to solve problems and has a knack for finding “the zone of agreement.” She enjoys sharing her experience, is a great confidante, and joined the Mentorship Program at Quantcast in 2022.
What motivated you to become a mentor?
Growing talent and ensuring that everyone has a fulfilling experience working at Quantcast is my primary concern as we continue to adapt our organization and shape our corporate culture. Mentoring is a great way to establish new work connections within our company and create new channels of communication that benefit all. Being a mentor is always a rewarding experience for me. I find myself looking forward to meeting with my mentee and get great satisfaction from seeing them grow their skills.
What is one thing you learned while in this program?
Whenever I’m a mentor, I’m always reminded not to assume that everyone has had the same life and work experience and to explore their reasoning and decision-making by asking a lot of questions and listening without judgment. This helps me to better understand their motivations and thinking process, to challenge their assumptions, and help them find a different way to examine issues and tackle challenges.
In your opinion, what makes a mentoring relationship successful?
In my mind a successful mentoring relationship is one in which both participants learn something, however small, but most importantly come to realize the benefits of making and maintaining connections with other professionals for the good of their careers. In some cases, those relationships outlast the program duration and are maintained for long periods of time. We have had that experience at Quantcast with many mentorship pairings.
Angelique Zobitz
Angelique is a regional account director at Quantcast, based out of Chicago. She is a firm believer in the Herman Hesse quote: “Every person is more than just themself; they also represent the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.”
What motivated you to become a mentor?
To be honest, I didn’t immediately think of myself as a mentor, though I’ve been a team leader and source of feedback for friends and coworkers throughout my career. My colleagues pushed me to consider mentoring others given the great feedback I’d received from team members and peers at Quantcast. I’ve always thought that helping others reach their goals and achieve their highest level of functioning is part of my role as a team leader so it wasn’t a huge shift in thinking to become a mentor.
What did you enjoy most about this experience?
What I most enjoyed about the mentorship program is engaging with someone who is deeply committed and passionate about making their professional goals a reality. The first few weeks of working with the protege were hard work of building trust, fact-finding, being honest about needs, and fine-tuning their goals. It’s not work that a regular workday creates opportunities for so we treated our time together as scrum sessions and used each two week meet as an opportunity to lay out and evaluate the efforts of our sprint goals. We were able to accomplish so much and I’m so proud of the way we were able to achieve their goals short-term and long-term.
What advice would you give to junior executives?
I think it’s very important to be an active listener in everything that we do. There will always be lots of voices and individuals who speak up in a room but I’ve found that it’s very valuable to be someone who actively listens, gets an understanding of the root issues and needs, synthesizes the various viewpoints, can coherently express the current state, and then formulate a plan of action or next steps that brings all the variables together to move forward. When you’ve actively listened before speaking, your input is always well-rounded, substantive, and valuable. Active listening to your team members, your colleagues, and your leadership will always serve you and the business you do well.
Learn more
If you missed the first part of this mentorship series, you can meet the proteges growing their careers here. You can also get more tips on how to develop self-confidence and lead with authenticity and empathy.