Looking back at Avancer’s inaugural program – but this is just the beginning…
Blog: Capgemini CTO Blog
It’s fitting that today is International Women’s Day as Capgemini is proud to announce that our inaugural Avancer program was a resounding success. For the uninitiated, our Avancer program was centered on the idea of helping women successfully climb the corporate ladder, without sacrificing their personal or professional well-being.
This revolutionary campaign was a natural successor to Capgemini’s Outstanding Women in Leadership (OWL) program in 2019 – which our Cloud Infrastructure Services (CIS) team has now expanded into a larger Group-wide diversity course.
Avancer in a nutshell
However, while our OWL program focused on promoting women from C-level and above, Avancer enables women in mid-level roles to learn new skills and apply them to their careers to create future female leaders today.
In this inaugural cycle of the Avancer program, 146 Capgemini women from all around the world worked with 79 mentors, both men and women, to learn the skills that will set them apart as they take control of their career trajectory.
Over the last six-months, participants attended a series of modules designed to help them gain the skills they need to move into more senior management roles. In addition, we also ran a series of monthly meetings – which we called the Learner’s Corner. These informal meetings reinforced Capgemini’s leadership dimensions – enhancing awareness of them, and how they could be leveraged within a real-world business environment. They were also a safe space where our Avancees could discuss what they were learning, how they were approaching assignments, or simply acted as somewhere where they could just bounce ideas off each other.
The numbers don’t lie…
How do we know Avancer was successful? Well, Capgemini was recognized as one of 2020+ Top Companies for Executive Women by Working Mother, an American magazine issued by Working Mother Media (WMM). Having a program like Avancer is key to supporting and fostering the growth of women in business.
But that’s not all, our participants also told us how much the course has improved their confidence – particularly their presentation skills – which has led to some of them receiving more responsibility in their day-to-day roles. Meanwhile, other participants got the skills they needed to even switch practices – starting a new career path entirely different from what they were doing before.
All of this success was driven by the programs agility which enabled us to observe, design, and redesign content to suit the specific needs of our participants. For example, we decided to bring in one expert on February 23, 2021, to talk to the group about building their confidence and using their knowledge during meetings and presentations.
What Avancer meant to our participants
But don’t take our word on how successful our Avancer program was. Take a look at what some of our Avancees had to say about the program itself. We asked them: why did you want to be involved with this program? What are your career goals and what are some of the most important things you have learned from being involved with Avancer? Here’s what some of them said:
“I wanted to join the Avancer program to be able to interact with women in all parts of Capgemini in order to improve my knowledge of the business. I also wanted to learn new ways on how to approach my business and improve myself as a leader. Having a community of women in the same role as me and learning their perspectives has helped me to grow even more as a leader.”
Samantha Dort, Operations Team Lead
“My goal for the next 5–10 years is to drive a positive change within Capgemini as a director. I also want to capitalize on my analytical skills to inspire process improvement for internal and external stakeholders.”
Athnee Ononiewu, FPIA team
“I have introduced myself to the digital transformation world. In addition, I have learned the best practices needed to become a business builder and develop a profit mindset. However, above all, I’m experiencing “La Niaque” across the learning journey from end-to-end. This enabled me to enjoy every learning activity, every networking opportunity, and has injected more passion and enthusiasm into my day-to-day activities.”
Gabriela Aguilar, Learning & Development Team Lead
So, what’s next for Avancer?
Avancer’s inaugural run may be over, but we don’t plan on stopping here. Over the next few months, we plan on spreading the benefits of Avancer across the entire Capgemini Group so that women working for us across industries and the globe will advance further in their careers.
Read other blogs in this series:
- Capgemini’s Avancer program lifts women up
- Capgemini’s Avancer program helps women ace their careers
For more information about Capgemini’s Avancer Program and how it is creating the female leaders of tomorrow today, reach out to Vanessa Tullio and and Susan Steer
This blog is written by Susan Steer and Vanessa Tullio.
Susan Steer is a Human Resources Leader and member of the Global Learning & Development team for the Business Services BU – North America. She is involved in every step of the employee life cycle. In addition to strategic support, she guides and mentors employees, enabling them to flourish, stay engaged and reach their potential.
Vanessa Tullio is an L&D manager with deep knowledge on facilitating learning interactions and designing developing programs. She is a professional coach and mentor, a Capgemini University facilitator, and she also handles global learning and development for Capgemini leadership and certification programs.
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