Mentoring impact report

10 years of mentoring: what have we learnt?

Kerning the Gap’s mentoring programme has connected hundreds of women across the design industry, creating space for honest conversations about confidence, careers, leadership and everything that happens in between.

To mark our tenth anniversary, we wanted to understand the impact those relationships have had, not just on the women being mentored but also on the mentors themselves.

Drawing on feedback from across multiple cohorts, our Mentoring Impact Report explores what changed, what made the biggest difference, and what ten years of mentoring has taught us about supporting women to thrive in design.

Mentees reported greater confidence, a stronger sense of their professional identity and tangible career progression. Mentors, meanwhile, described becoming better listeners, leaders and managers — showing that a great mentoring relationship creates development on both sides.

A few things we discovered:

• 78% of mentees felt significantly more confident in their abilities.

• 79% became more aware of their professional strengths.

• 75% achieved a new career milestone — from promotions and senior appointments to starting their own businesses.

• 82% of mentors gained new perspectives from their mentees, with mentoring strengthening leadership, coaching and people-management skills too.

• And perhaps our most important learning: the quality and consistency of the relationship matters more than simply having expertise to offer. Trust, rapport and showing up over time emerged as the foundations of successful mentoring.

Read the full report to explore what we’ve learned from ten years of mentoring women in design, and what those lessons could mean for the way we develop the next generation of leaders.