Mentorship is a powerful tool for closing the gender gap in technology, boosting career growth, leadership opportunities, and retention for women in tech. Intuit’s Tech Women @Intuit program shows how structured mentorship builds skills, confidence, and networks that help women thrive in technology careers.
Key points
- Women remain underrepresented in tech and leadership roles.
- Mentorship, sponsorship, and coaching serve different career purposes.
- Mentorship provides guidance, advocacy, and skill-building opportunities.
- Data shows mentorship boosts promotion rates, pay growth, and retention.
- The Tech Women @Intuit program pairs mentors and mentees through structured matching.
- Participants gain expanded networks, leadership skills, and long-term career benefits.
Why mentorship is essential for women in technology careers
Women and other underrepresented groups in tech have a lot of ground to make up. As of 2023, only 29% of technologists and 25.5% of senior-level personnel identified as women or non-binary.
A peek inside AnitaB.org’s TechEES report shows only 63.5% of all women and non-binary technologists report a sense of belonging at work. Black respondents reported a particularly low sense of belonging. Meanwhile, a study by the Center for Talent Innovation found that 71% of leaders are likely to pick proteges of the same race and gender.
To change this picture, these professionals need to support each other to rise together. At Intuit, we encourage our employees to form connections with role models and mentors for career guidance, skills development, and networking.
Both structured programs and less formal relationships can play a vital role in helping each individual achieve their full potential. In fact, AnitaB.org has found that companies offering a program like Intuit’s Tech Women @Intuit (TWI) Mentorship Program have 4.7X more senior Black women technologists and 7.8X more Black, Latinx, Native American, and Pacific Islander women in technology executive roles.
As Crystal Robinson-Pipersburgh, group manager for data engineering at Intuit, says, “You come in thinking that your own knowledge and experience is what’s going to take you to that next level or that next place that you want to be. That’s not the way it works. You do need to network. You do need to have mentors.”
Mentorship vs. sponsorship vs. coaching in technology careers
Starting with the right career relationship ensures you’ll have the system in place to achieve your goals. However, a woman new to the tech world might not immediately know what type of support she needs. Beyond mentorship, there is also sponsorship and career coaching. We’ll define all three below.
Mentorship
A mentor shares experience, offers advice, and provides guidance to help you navigate challenges and grow your skills. In tech, this might mean a senior engineer helping you prepare for a new role or introducing you to others in your field.
Sponsorship
A sponsor actively advocates for you, using their influence to connect you to high-visibility projects, recommend you for promotions, or endorse you for leadership opportunities.
Coaching
A coach focuses on specific skills or performance goals, providing structured feedback and targeted exercises to help you improve in a defined area. They might help you develop a new technical competency or build leadership communication, for example.
Whichever path you choose, mentorship often serves as the entry point. The right mentor helps women in tech build the relationships and confidence that make sponsorship and coaching more effective.
Technology career advice from women in tech mentorships
“Building relationships, networking, and securing a mentor can push you into the right direction, whether it’s engineering skills, soft skills, or just having someone to listen to your aspirations and say, ‘I know a person who does that, let me connect you with her,’” says Justyna Yung, analytics leader at Intuit.
Bridget Kimball, former vice president of technology at Intuit, emphasizes the candid nature of the relationship as a key part of its value. “It’s a safe environment for someone to give you feedback. They’re invested in helping you be better at whatever it is that you’re going after, and being a sounding board to help you think about what you want, what you want to do next, and the gaps you might have.”
How mentorships for women in tech drive career growth
When women in technology have access to mentorship programs like Tech Women @ Intuit, the benefits can extend far beyond individual skill-building. We’ve seen them impact representation and leadership pipelines, directly influencing long-term career growth at Intuit and beyond.
These statistics reflect just how powerful mentorship relationships can be for women in tech:
- In a study of female engineering students, those with women mentors all stayed in their program, compared to an 18% dropout rate with male mentors (and 11% with no mentor).
- Mentoring programs have been shown to improve promotion and retention rates for women and minorities dramatically, from 15% to 38%, compared to non‑mentored peers.
- A Harvard Business Review report found women often underrate their performance by up to 33% compared to equally performing men. Mentorship helps close the gap by providing external validation and advocacy.
- Mentored employees are five times more likely to be promoted and over 20% more likely to receive a raise.
- In STEM, 31% of women with female mentors received a promotion last year, often accompanied by higher salary increases compared to those without mentorship.
- 77% of women in tech with mentors remain in the industry after three years. That is significantly higher retention than those without mentors.
Tech mentorship is a proven catalyst for helping women secure, thrive in, and lead in technology jobs.
How to find a mentorship match with women in technology
It’s clear that mentorship is valuable, but how do you build a mentor/mentee relationship?
Following a pilot in 2018 with 14 mentor-mentee pairs, the TWI Mentorship program launched globally in 2020. Since then, it has impacted 918 total mentor pairs through six global cohorts, including women and non-binary professionals as well as members of underrepresented racial groups.
“For people on the introverted side who don’t feel comfortable sending an email to someone they don’t know, it’s also helpful to look for organizations with an official mentoring program,” says Beryce Garcia. “I found my mentor through Tech Women @ Intuit. I just filled out a form about what I was looking for and my background, and they paired me with someone who I’ve been able to develop a really great relationship with.”
How we pair mentors and mentees at Tech Women @ Intuit
Fitting of an organization with a strong data science capability, participants in the TWI Mentorship program are paired with each other using a third-party matching system, which takes into consideration information shared on their enrollment form.
This includes:
- Technical and leadership qualities they’re most interested in developing
- Their career aspirations
- The technical craft skill rubrics and company values they’d most like to focus on
- A few practical matters, such as time zone preferences
Mentors and mentees are expected to meet for at least one hour per month for the six-month term of their pairing. At the end of this time, they are free to continue their relationship if they wish, while also being encouraged to switch pairs to continue building and diversifying their personal board of directors.
Explore tech mentorship at Intuit
In our upcoming blogs, we’ll talk about how technology professionals at any company can form valuable mentoring relationships to advance their careers, build their skills, and grow their networks. If you’re interested in exploring opportunities for mentorship as part of the Intuit organization, visit our Careers at Intuit site to find out how you can join our team.
Intuit is an Equal Opportunity Employer. For more information about our EEO policy, please click here.