Business Fit Magazine November 2018 Issue 1 | Page 38

Interview
The
Mentoring
Champion
Mentoring has the power to change lives.
Chelsey Baker
National Mentoring Day was founded by award
winning mentor Chelsey Baker to celebrate
mentoring and recognise the invaluable
contribution that it makes to enterprise, education
and society. Taking place annually on 27th
October with Lord Young as the Patron, the official
National Awareness Day encourages mentoring
events and activities to take place across the world.
The campaign to make mentoring accessible to
everyone of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds
has received widespread support from leading
brands, corporate organisations, celebrities
and governments. Here in the UK the campaign
reached the House of Lords, generating huge press
coverage and attracting audiences worldwide.
Chelsey has successfully mentored hundreds
of businesses and individuals and is recognised
as one of the UK’s leading business mentors.
Her career spans over twenty years working in
media, publishing, PR and marketing. Chelsey
is an inspirational mentoring champion
and campaigner where she has won five
high profile awards for her mentoring work
including “Business Mentor of the Year"
awarded by Start Your Business magazine and
she received the British Bankers' Association’s
"Excellence in Enterprise Mentoring Award” at
BAFTA. Chelsey is passionate about helping
individuals achieve their full potential through
mentoring and was chosen as a lead mentor
for numerous governmental projects.
38
As an author Chelsey is quoted and featured
in hundreds of media outlets including Forbes,
Reuters, The FT, Independent, Telegraph,
Evening Standard, City AM, Daily Express, BBC,
ITV, SKY, BBC2, The Times, Guardian and listed
as one of the most influential women in the
world.
Why did you launch National
Mentoring Day?
I wanted to recognise the great work that
mentors do and thank them for their efforts
and appreciate the invaluable contribution
they make. We need more mentors to support
all areas of business and society, so I launched
the campaign to help encourage others to
mentor or seek mentoring.
Whilst there are hundreds of great mentoring
programmes out there, nothing connected
everyone together. National Mentoring Day
helps unite them and raise awareness on the
benefits and impact of mentoring. I created
a platform where all the different types of
mentoring communities can co-exist and
my aim is to connect all the initiatives and
programmes together. This includes enterprise,
educational, ex-forces, community and ex-
offender mentoring to work collaboratively to
help advance mentoring.
We need more
mentors to
support all areas
of business and
society
39