Lucinda Stewart: Attracting Allies and Mentors

Description

For most of her career, Lucinda Stewart was a woman working in contexts-investment banking private equity, venture capital-largely dominated by men. Nonetheless, Stewart had been able, virtually from the beginning of her career, to obtain allies and mentors and, as a consequence, accelerate her career progress (e.g., she was a VC partner in her late 20s). The case describes Stewart’s life, upbringing, and career trajectory, with a focus on the personal qualities/attributes and strategies she has used to attract allies and supporters. Attracting supporters is something crucial to building power, because allies are crucial for getting things done.

Learning Objective

1. Understand how to obtain allies/supporters/mentors to accelerate one’s career. 2. Illustrate the importance of interpersonal relationships/emotional intelligence on career success. 3. Analyze/describe social networking activity and how to make such activity more successful and consequential.

Keywords

career success interpersonal relationship power mentors