Finding the right mentor isn’t about choosing someone with the most impressive job title. It’s about finding someone who understands your challenges and has been through a similar experience. Whether you're changing careers, stepping into leadership, or building your own business, the right mentor can make all the difference. Discover how to find the right mentor, set meaningful goals, and make the most of your mentoring journey.

Finding the right mentor isn’t about choosing the most successful person in your industry. It’s about finding someone who understands your challenges and can help you move forward. Not sure where to start? Discover how to set clear mentoring goals and find the right mentor for your career. Read the full article!

Karolína Kuchařová had spent more than 15 years in marketing, at Vodafone and SAZKA among others, and still found herself learning a new craft: leading people. She joined Femme Palette’s mentoring program as she began leading a team at Form Factory, hoping to avoid micromanaging, give people more ownership, and get comfortable with honest feedback. What she found was an outside perspective on situations that felt much bigger when she was in the middle of them, the realization that her instinct to help can limit someone else’s chance to learn, and a mentor who helped her understand herself as a leader.

Iva Welker, CEO of VML & Ogilvy Czech Republic, never planned to become a CEO. She found advertising through an internship and kept saying yes to opportunities that stretched her. For her, leadership is less about position and more about the trust people place in you. She shares how she tells a healthy stretch from burnout, leads teams through change, and protects bold creative work. Her advice to women hesitating over a bigger role: apply before you feel completely ready.

Gaby Sittová had already directed a feature film and built a career across tech, film, and creative leadership, and still felt like an unsure newcomer in parts of her own life. She joined Femme Palette’s mentoring program looking for help with personal branding. What she found instead was permission to ask for a mentor rematch when the first one wasn’t right, a reminder to actually celebrate what she’d already done, and a mentor who helped her stop treating herself like someone with endless capacity to give.

Leadership rarely starts with a plan. Often it begins with saying yes to an opportunity before you feel fully ready. In this partner spotlight, Magdaléna Wavle, Chief People & Culture Officer at Česká spořitelna, shares her journey from banking to Microsoft and back, how she leads with trust and adapts her style to the moment, and why the biggest barriers are often the ones in our own heads. As a partner of this year’s Leadership & Career Conference, she also offers practical advice for women preparing to step into leadership. Read her story.

Klara Matousova set out to study microelectronics and pictured a future in a lab. Instead she ended up in industrial sales, took a job abroad with little more than a “now or never” attitude, and worked her way into project management at Schneider Electric. Her take on it: the opportunities that shape a career are rarely the ones anyone planned for. Read her story!

Olgica Mitrevska of Organon on why so many women treat fertility as a topic for "later," how the Plodnost pod kontrolou initiative is trying to change that, and why she believes fertility literacy belongs in the same conversation as career planning, not separate from it.