“On a round trip to Thailand with my family in 2007, I got the idea for Mentory,” says Natasha Friis Saxberg, founder of the global mentorship platform. “I felt so amazingly privileged, having a wonderful family and being able to pursue my dreams. But taking a look at the population in Thailand made me realize that the privilege I am blessed with because I live in Denmark, is out of reach for most people in the world.”
In taking stock of her own success, Friis Saxberg realized that role models are the missing link for every individual that wishes to grow beyond what their social rank or self image allows them to. To combat this, she and her husband decided to launch Mentory in February of this year. Mentory is an open online mentorship forum where people can pursue traditional one-on-one closed mentorship or pose questions to a discussion board where anyone with the appropriate knowledge can answer. Their primary target group is business professionals 20-40 years old and a mentorship base of 30-50 years old.
The platform is still in its preliminary stages, but I am in love with the idea. Yahoo Answers, Ask Jeeves, and Wiki Answers might be able to answer your random queries, but they can’t act as a personal support mechanism to you – they don’t really care – and it is still somewhat taboo to randomly seek out individuals on Facebook and pick their brains unless you have a friend-to-friend connection. Therefore, Mentory achieves its value in that it’s specifically set up for connecting strangers who are open to exchange. Friis Saxberg hopes that, if there are no geographical constraints, the online mentorship will eventual develop into something more tangible and in-person as well.
Immediately, I think of social entrepreneurship and sustainability as two professional fields that can benefit from Mentory. Because these fields are relatively new in application to the business world, the exchange of ideas is paramount to their success. Like any trend, there are always people out there who have been practicing sustainability or social responsibility within their businesses well before it was considered a movement. These are the people we need to be talking to now and Mentory is one of many who provide the perfect platform.
Mentory
- Mentory serves as a global online open platform for mentorship.
- Organizatio n Type: Non-Profit
- Website: www.mentory.com
- Founder(s): Natasha Friis Saxberg
- Founded: 2009
- Location: Denmark
- See complete company list here
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