The 17 mentees, who come from various areas of the business events ecosystem, including event management, tourism and hospitality, are meeting in person on Wednesday at the All Blacks Experience at SkyCity Auckland for the kick-off workshop for this year’s mentoring program.
Mentors are also completing an online workshop to similarly prepare them for the mentoring experience.
The program’s sponsor is the New Zealand International Convention Centre (NZICC) which will open next February. The NZICC is owned by SkyCity Entertainment Group.
“The response from both mentors and mentees who took part in previous programmes has been outstanding,” said BEIA’s chief executive Lisa Hopkins.
“We give mentees a personal support system, to help both professionally and personally, while mentors have the chance to nurture early-career professionals and share the wisdom of their experience.
“We can’t thank our mentors enough for the time and energy they give to the BE Mentored Programme, giving back to the industry and supporting our emerging leaders.”
Each mentor-mentee pair will meet monthly from now until the BEIA annual conference in November, which will also be held in Auckland.
“We are excited to follow the journey of our mentoring pairs and will be checking in during the course of the programme to see how they are progressing and provide any support required,” said Hopkins.
Similar mentorship and young leadership programs are run by both the Australian Business Events Association (ABEA) and Meetings and Events Australia (MEA) in Australia. Applications for MEA’s mentorship program are open until the end of this month.
