Mentoring platform launched to support women in hospitality

A new mentoring platform has been launched to support and develop the careers of women in the hospitality industry.

Inspiring Women in Hospitality, a platform aiming to create a global community of women in hospitality, will see the Inspire Programme use mentoring and events to build a pipeline of future female leaders for the industry.

The Inspire Programme starts with group workshops of six to eight members, meeting online or in person, discussing a broad range of topics and allowing members to learn from one another. At the end of the workshops, participants will be paired up to begin their peer-to-peer mentoring relationship. The group will come back together regularly to check on progress.

The programme is open to anyone at any stage of their career and participants will be given a structure and guidance.

The platform has been launched by Naureen Ahmed, who trained at Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne before joining the Landmark London hotel as assistant revenue centre manager. Most recently she spent 12 years at STR, including as director of marketing for the international business, before launching Inspiring Women in Hospitality in 2020.

She said: "The vision is for gender balance across hospitality. We know it is there at entry level, but it drops off as you climb the ladder. By coming together, we can identify the reasons behind this and address them.

"Over the past year I have been travelling around the world, hosting Inspire roundtables, recording podcasts, listening to women and the issues in the sector and the two themes where I feel we can make a difference are mentorship and community.

"This has led me to create a programme which will build strong relationships that last, forge real connections and create a space to have conversations about topics where we can help each other. We are all good at having a glass of wine and sharing our woes, but we need to help each other find solutions."