The Road to Ceresa
By: Anna Robinson
How I got here…
When I graduated from college, like so many other women of my generation, I was ready to take the world by storm, and change the world. After all, I was born in the year Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK, my home country. The glass ceiling had long been broken, right?
Wrong.
Fast forward twenty-ish years. I’d had an incredible range of professional and educational experiences – with three degrees, I was a partner at McKinsey & Co, happily married with three girls. Despite having a challenging, highly paid, highly respected job – I just felt there was something else. I wanted to break out of the box of professional services – I wanted to use my creativity, to build something – and most of all, to do something with direct social impact in the world.
So having made a bold choice to leave McKinsey and an incredible income behind, I was trying to find my “passion”. I watched every single episode of Chef’s Table on Netflix. Those chefs knew from a young age what they were going to do. There was always some version of “I always knew, since I was knee-high to my grandmother cooking in her kitchen…”. That calling is what I wanted to feel. I worked with a coach. I met lots of people for coffee. I journaled. But it still did not come to me.
Finding purpose
Then I had a health scare that changed everything (spoiler, I am totally fine now).
I went for my usual morning run through our neighborhood and started to get a migraine – something I experienced every few months. Nothing out of the ordinary. But as the day progressed, the migraine shifted. I had a hair appointment, but could barely sit up, so my wonderful hair stylist drove me home, out of concern. At home, I collapsed in bed, could not feel my arms, and had a strange out-of-body sensation of looking down on myself. EMS arrived, thought it was nothing serious, but out of precaution took me to the ER, where the level of concern quickly ratcheted up when I could not tell them my name, what year it was, or who the president was.
I was in and out of consciousness, unable to talk, move, or understand the words being said to me. They treated me as if it was a massive stroke. My husband had to make the decision to give me the medicine which could save a massive stroke, but if it was not a stroke, could itself trigger a brain bleed.
I remember moments of lucidity – coming-to in a room – coming-to in the middle of an MRI tube – and being able to observe what was happening with separation. I felt an incredible peace for myself, acceptance that this was likely the end –an innocent fascination with knowing how it was ending, recognizing this comes for all of us, and it is my time. And a profound sadness that my girls would grow up without a mom. Our lives are so small and so big at the same time.
But over the coming hours and days, my functionality gradually started coming back. I remember waking up for a few moments, turning to my husband and asking him “can you tell me the girls’ names – I know that I know them, I just can’t remember?”. He said he told me their names, then quietly sobbed.
As I recovered (and without ever receiving a solid diagnosis), I had renewed clarity.
We choose how we spend this life
We choose what we care the most about, and what we are going to do about it. This does not just drop in your lap from the heavens. And I had been given so much – education, career, networks – and it was not about me – but about what impact I could have. I got out of my own way.
With renewed vigor and zest for life, I thought about what was important enough to devote my career to.
As I deliberately tuned into what I care the most about, I thought about where my energy had gone. I spent a gap year teaching in Tanzania. During my Master’s degree, I focused on women’s issues in international development. Through McKinsey, I’d worked in West Africa on healthcare solutions focused on women’s healthcare access. I’d spent much of my “spare” time at McKinsey supporting training and programs to support more women becoming leaders at the firm. I had personally mentored many women and others coming up (who, frankly, are now far more successful and impressive in their careers – I just LOVE seeing this).
I felt very drawn to this work having spent time in international development and corporate settings supporting more equitable access and opportunity. I’ve always felt this pull towards social justice.
So, as any good former consultant does, I dove into the data. This is where we come back to my incorrect assumption about the glass ceiling.
Sure, women have become CEOs of global companies and sit on boards. But representation remains pitiful. We’ve made such little progress in the last 40 years.
This struck a chord with me – for both head and heart reasons.
Head:
When Ceresa started, in 2018, there were more CEOs named John, than women CEOs. To be fair, we now have more women CEOs than CEOs named John, Tom, Dick or Harry combined – but how disappointing that this is considered progress. Women CEOs in the Fortune 500 have gone from 5% to 8% since 2018. Yay. 60% growth. Yes – off a ridiculously low bar.
Women’s aspirations to senior leadership start out significantly higher than men’s, but drop by 2/3 within the first 5 years of working to half of men’s. Women are taking themselves off the career ladder.
Multiple studies now show the broken rung is earlier in the career – not at senior leader levels. The biggest drop off for women (and women of color even more so) is promotion to manager.
Women get less mentoring, and their mentors are less senior.
The feedback women receive (and the content of mentoring) is focused on communications and psycho-social issues, as opposed to the career development focused feedback that men receive.
Heart:
I think about my own children. How can I accept a world where my three daughters (or so I thought at the time) would enter the workforce in another 20 years, and look back at me and say “How come the bosses and leaders don’t look like me? You knew about this – how come your generation didn’t change this? Does this mean I can’t do that, or I shouldn’t try?”
Going from mission to solution
My early exploration pointed to a broken cog in the machine that builds leaders. Mentoring. It seemed to be accepted anecdotally that mentoring is critical. In fact, there are also rigorous, academic studies that prove the impact of mentoring on promotions, pay raises, confidence and more. And for the broken rung of mid-career, mentoring would be especially effective – helping women navigate the complexities of leadership skills, promotions and politics, and balancing their whole lives.
Yet formal mentoring programs almost inevitably fail. In my first hundred or so interviews, “mentoring” had almost become a dirty word amongst women –sullied by innumerable formal mentoring experiences that were more effort than they were worth.
And then there was Sheryl Sandberg, who famously wrote in Lean In “Instead, of telling young people, “‘Get a mentor and you will excel, we need to tell them, ‘Excel and you will get a mentor.’”
This idea that only organic mentoring can work was like wildfire.
But just think about that. If you must excel first, to organically attract a mentor and benefit from a mentor – that means only people who are already deemed to be high performing will get mentoring.
That is where Sheryl Sandberg has it wrong, very wrong.
Sheryl’s parents were a doctor and a professor. Sheryl went to Harvard, where she was taken under the wing by Larry Summers who paved many golden opportunities for her. But what if your parents had not gone to college? What if college, let alone Harvard, was not in your option set? What if you could not afford that or didn’t know how to apply?
Sheryl’s organic mentoring philosophy reinforces the incredible inequities in leadership today. Those with existing privilege are more likely to accel, and therefore attract more support, that enables further success and career growth, reinforcing that privilege.
To break this cycle, we must break the notion that mentoring has to be organic. We must make formal and structured mentoring effective and equitable. That would advance the careers of under-represented, less privileged people and create more equitable leadership.
That was the founding premise and purpose of Ceresa.
The following months and years involved hundreds of conversations, academic research, focus groups, pilots and experimentation to create mentoring that could have deep impact, and reach the people who needed it most.
The founding of Ceresa talks a lot about women. But Ceresa is inclusive and focused on under-represented talent – what is the difference?
When Ceresa first started, we were focused exclusively on women. This had been my personal passion.
Over the first year, we realized this was limiting in three key ways, and we couldn’t really see any good reason for keeping that limited focus
Most importantly, for many women, their gender identity is not the most important aspect affecting their goals and needs – and only having women mentors, taking a gendered lens, ignoring other challenges, and did not make adequate space for intersectionality
Secondly, for some companies, it was problematic to offer a solution to a subset of their population – so it was limiting our ability to reach those who need our solution. Companies could choose the best way to target their employees, we did not need to make that decision for them.
Third, other under-represented groups face similar challenges with a lack of effective mentoring so our solution could have even more impact by opening our doors wider.
Instead, we focus on the words inclusion and belonging.
Our commitment to inclusion and belonging drives every aspect of Ceresa's mentoring and leadership development solutions. We aim to create a supportive environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to reach their full potential.
As we continue to grow and evolve, our mission remains clear: to break down barriers, foster diversity, and create a more equitable future for all. Through Ceresa, we are not just building leaders, but cultivating a community of support and opportunity for generations to come.
