2020 Impact Report
This was a challenging time for everyone, and whole person support was needed more than ever. Despite all the turmoil of 2020, the Ceresa community continued to grow and broaden our impact. In our end-of-year report, we share our mission, impact and a note of optimism for the year to come.
A year we’ll never forget…
At Ceresa, we provide access to the support that we all need, but don't all receive... the people and resources to help lift us up, navigate careers and pursue lives of meaning. 2020 was a year when we needed a different, deeper level of support than ever before – reinforcing Ceresa’s mission.
Impact is at the heart of Ceresa and informs each and every decision. We focus on ensuring all individuals have access to world-class career and life guidance, and thereby help companies to grow tomorrow’s leaders.
Our vision is for an equitable society where leadership is diverse and fully representative.
Ceresa’s impact is made possible by convening our global community. Thank you to our mentors who give the gift of 7 hours. Together, we’ve been able to deliver over 2,000 mentor hours resulting in meaningful change for our participants, such as a 50% increase in their confidence to achieve goals! Thank you to our participants who bravely dive into their wildest dreams and challenges. Thank you to our partner companies that are leading the way by investing in their employees as human beings first.
We hold ourselves accountable for impact to each of you in our community. To that end, this impact report shares the impact we saw in 2020.
Best & healthy wishes,
Anna Robinson, Founder & CEO
Nicole Tanzillo, Co-founder & COO
Responding to the challenges of 2020.
To better support our community through the challenges of 2020, we asked how we could help — and sought to address our community’s needs with:
- 40% drop in pricing to ensure cost wasn’t a barrier for those who most needed support
- Support for mentors and partners on topics such managing anxiety, understanding unconscious bias, the future of DE&I, and employee experience
- Publicly shared company commitments
We’re on a mission to close the diversity gap in leadership by democratizing access to truly transformative leadership development for all.
And that mission is more relevant than ever before.
From day one, Ceresa has been a mission-driven company and our mission served as our guide as we navigated 2020. The effects of COVID-19, remote work, and racial inequity have created a greater need for whole person, personalized, virtual support for employees – especially those that remain underrepresented in today’s leadership.
Inequitable access to
career success factors…
Diverse, underrepresented individuals still:
Receive less access to support
Have struggled the most during COVID-19
…results in persistent
leadership gaps…
White women make up only 23% of C-suite leaders; Black women make up only 3%
Due to COVID-19, as many as two million women are considering taking a leave of absence or leaving
Black employees are 30% more likely to intend to leave their company than white employees
…and reduces company
performance and GDP.
Racially diverse executive teams provide 35% higher EBIT and 33% more long-term value creation
Retention improves 40-50% with mentoring
Global economic data shows by adding more women to the workforce, the global GDP could increase 26%
How it works.
(our theory of change)
Drawing on the last three years at Ceresa, over a decade of experience with McKinsey & Co, academic research, hundreds of interviews, and thousands of data points on Ceresa participants, we’ve identified the five pillars behind the success and impact of our approach, applicable in our program and in a variety of other learning and leadership settings.
This approach is especially critical to diversifying leadership – grounded in research on the needs of women and other underrepresented groups in the workplace and beyond.
“My mentor has given me terrific feedback and help with things I’ve really struggled with. This is one of the most valuable things I’ve done in a long time.”
2020 CERESA PARTICIPANT
Our collective impact.
How do we know we’re making a difference and ultimately, accomplishing our mission? Today, our key metrics include participant engagement, satisfaction, clarity of vision, confidence to achieve goals, desire to be a top leader and feeling of empowerment. This year, we saw industry-leading engagement and satisfaction scores, and significant increases in all other metrics.
For 2021, we’ll add third party competency assessments and feedback to assess performance improvements. Over time, we’ll add longitudinal data to understand the career impact for individuals and performance growth for companies.
2,000
MENTORING
HOURS IN 2020
+300%
CLEAR VISION
FOR CAREER
4.9 / 5.0
PARTICIPANT
SATISFACTION
+50%
CONFIDENCE
TO ACHIEVE GOALS
90%+
ENGAGEMENT
+20%
DESIRE TO BE
A TOP EXEC
Ceresa Mentors gave 2,000+ mentoring hours in 2020.
Ceresa Mentors… giving back in a time of great need.
Why do they do it? Certainly, we offer real benefits: a supportive community, training, job opportunities through our network. But that’s never the WHY. Ceresa's mentor community is global and very senior. 50% are C-level. They are ALL busy leaders. Busy parents. Busy volunteers. Busy with aging parents. Busy coping with the stresses of COVID and social justice issues... you name it.
So why do they do it? They understand the power of 7 hours. 7 hours of sharing their journey. Sharing their triumphs and failures. Cheerleading for someone else.
50%+
HOLD C-LEVEL
POSITION
80/20
FEMALE / MALE
RATIO
28%
BIPOC
REPRESENTATION
75%+
HOLD VP OR
HIGHER POSITION
“I want to give back and make sure that anybody who can gain from my experiences has the chance.”
Anudit Vikram
Chief Product Officer
MediaMath
“It's always nice to be able to see the world from a different perspective, a different view than my own.”
Leslie Wingo
President & CEO
Sanders/Wingo Advertising
“Mentoring helps me to impart faith and belief to mentees, allowing them to transform, bringing them an immense sense of courage and confidence.”
Jayasree Iyer
Banking Industry Executive
And to close, a sneak peek at 2021. ;-)
Ceresa for all.
Shhhhhhh... this one’s still officially under wraps! ;-) Keep an eye out for an exciting announcement later in 2021 about a new way to join Ceresa and benefit from our incredible global community of leaders, mentors, and experts.
Scaling impact.
We’ll continue to bring our unique model of support to leaders across the US and globally. Our model of self-work, coaching and mentoring is proving deeply transformative. Know a company or leader who’d benefit? Let us know!
Advisory council.
We look forward to launching our new Advisory Council… a group of diverse leaders and luminaries who will guide us and hold us accountable to our mission. Stay tuned!
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