The she.grows mini-mentor scheme run by shesaidso.ams, ADE University and ADE Beats October 2019 during Amsterdam Dance Event was a big success!
Check out the official video in collaboration with ADE University and ADE Beats:
Introduction Breakfast for Mentors and Mentees
The she.grows program aims to broaden aspirations beyond the traditional roles and is focused to provide a safe and confidential space to help others make positive, informed choices about their careers.
she.grows aims to raise and broaden participants’ career aspirations, negotiate barriers to career progression and the workplace, and equip them with the skills to navigate challenging ideologies and issues of identity and belonging in the working world. With a total 15 mentor/mentee pairs, the scheme established new connections, opportunities and inspiring talks for everyone involved.
Amongst the mentors, different countries like US, UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, The Netherlands and India were represented, presenting a divers range of experienced professionals, as well as a wide variety of areas of expertise; from Label Management, Artist Management, Bookings, Events, Festivals, Publishing, PR & Marketing, Songwriting and Sound Engineering.
The young professionals, aged 20 to 28 years old, were teamed up with their own mentor for a period of 5 days to experience the unique music conference and festival of Amsterdam Dance Event together.
Kicking things off with an Introduction Breakfast at Wednesday the 16th of October, all pairs got the chance to meet in person for the first time, and discuss their aims and goals for the upcoming week. The rest of the conference week, couples were free to plan their own meet-ups and focus on networking, communication and knowledge exchange in the broadest sense possible. Sunday marked the final day of the program, where both mentors and mentees came together at our ADE Hangover event to wrap up what was an inspiring and motivating week for everyone involved.
We spoke to the mentors and mentees to see how they found the programme.
“Extremely productive, fun and exciting experience, can’t wait for the next one!” — Meli Rodriguez [ Mentee, Costa Rica ]
“Great organization with great opportunity to meet new people of different levels, areas and territories!” — Thea Nordqvist, Head of Label at Amuse [ Mentor, Sweden ]
“Honored to be selected to share my experiences/knowledge within the music industry with the next generation of female music professionals. So happy to see the excitement and eagerness of these kids and proud to see so many great women stepping up to build their careers in music. Onwards and upwards we go!” — Justine Servais, PR & Marketing Manager at Armada Music [ Mentor, NL ]
“Incredibly inspiring!” — Tamanna Mordani, Co-Founder Envision Events [ Mentor, India ]
“Alongside my mentor, every person that I encountered during this week that was in some way affiliated with SheSaid.so was super open to connect, give advice and inspire. she.grows has opened me up to a warm and open network that is there to support each other, and I am so grateful to now be a part of this!” — Robin van der Heijden, Art & Economics Graduate [ Mentee, NL ]
“I met Justine Servais at Armada University on Friday and got to tag along to a network event she had to attend and Armada Invites later that night. I got to meet a lot of her colleagues and people she works with and got the full tour around the Armada office. It was super inspiring to get an insight in the overall vibe that hangs around the place! I also found it very informative to get a look into what her work as a PR-manager entails during a week like ADE.” — Robin van der Heijden, Art & Economics Graduate [ Mentee, NL ]