Dell MD Angela Fox: Mentors have provided me with the courage to make decisions or seize opportunities.
It’s Ok to fire a mentor, according to one of Australia’s most influential women in tech, Dell ANZ Managing Director and Senior Vice President Angela Fox.
She says such relationships can come to a logical end, others simply never take off in the first place. We’re all time-poor enough without having to worry about sustaining relationships that are not working or are no longer needed. “It’s important to have the courage to fire your mentor,” she says.
As someone who’s benefited from a variety of mentors herself, and who’s also passionate about helping women excel into leadership, Fox wants women to have the best supporters possible around them, especially in the tech sector where women are still significantly outnumbered by men.
“The reality is that you need support in any sector,” she says. “You need an inclusive environment, an environment set up for women to find their voice, to take on these opportunities and to feel supported in what they’re working on.”
I spoke to Fox on the 10th Anniversary of Dell’s Women in IT Executive Mentoring program, celebrated in Canberra last night with Foreign Affairs minister Julie Bishop addressing past and present recipients of the program. WITEM is a 12-month program partnering high performing women in the IT profession with C-level mentors, and boasts 340 participants and 170 mentor-mentee pairings. It has an impressive list of alumni, including Intel Managing Director Kate Burleigh.
Addressing the 10 year anniversary, Burleigh said that upon being nominated by a former boss at Intel to participate in the program, she joked that being the only female on the leadership team he was lucky to have her as a token participant.
She said she later realized the cynicism was misplaced, especially as she was matched with then EMC CEO David Webster, who was generous with his time and offered her an excellent sounding board on big career decisions.
I’ve seen a lot of different mentoring programs start up and fail, so I was particularly keen to hear Angela Fox’s views on why this one is still going strong after ten years. Fox said its success comes back to the founder’s original “practical innovation” on trying to get more women in to leadership, as well as the long-term partnership the program’s had with facilitator Jenny Morris and the team from Orijen Consulting. Fox added the program’s found particular success in Canberra across the public sector, including with the Department of Finance.
From there, she said one of the biggest benefits of the program is that mentees gain visibility, particularly in getting access to senior executives and contacts within government.
Fox, who was initially hired by former Dell Australia Managing Director Joe Kremer – who founded the mentoring program – said mentors have offered significant value during “critical points” in her career. She says Kremer himself has been everything from a manager to a mentor, coach, sponsor and all-round supporter during her tenure with the tech company.
“Leaders within my business and in the industry have played a pivotal role in guiding me and acting as a sounding board and giving me their perspective in order to provide insight,” she said. “They have helped to provide me with the courage to make decisions or seize opportunities.”
