Mentoring program builds bridges among diverse women
St. Cloud Financial CU first sponsors a national 1-to-1 Woman cohort then brings the model back home to Minnesota.
It was a sunny spring afternoon in 2022 when Jed Meyer, president/CEO of $327 million St. Cloud Financial Credit Union, St. Cloud, Minnesota, first saw a post on LinkedIn from Montana’s Credit Unions’ recently retired CEO Tracie Kenyon.
At that time, Kenyon had just participated in a program for women that paired executive-level Caucasian mentors with non-executive African-American women in the credit union industry. She was now challenging other credit unions to host their own regional cohorts.
It wasn’t long before Meyer, a CUES member, was connected with Shellee Mitchell, founder of the 1-to-1Woman Mentoring program as well as her own firm, Sapphire Dimension LLC.
“When you first hear about the 1-to-1Woman program, you can’t help but be inspired by Shellee’s vision to connect women from various backgrounds and cultures to create connection, where each person is learning from the other,” Meyer says. “Immediately I knew we needed to get connected to Shellee, to not just participate in the next round of mentorships, but to actually sponsor a … cohort.”
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