Book review
Forget a Mentor, Find a
Sponsor: The New Way to
Fast-Track Your Career
Sylvia Ann Hewlett
Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, Massachusetts, September 2013
Reviewed by
Elizabeth A. Amin, MD
S
ylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist who received her BA degree
from Girton College, Cambridge and her PhD from London
University. She is the founding president of the Center for Talent Innovation, a Manhattan-based think tank, where she currently
chairs the Task Force for Talent Innovation. In this role she leads a
private sector consortium of some seventy-five global companies
committed to changing the face of leadership around the world.
She holds academic positions at Columbia University where, since
2004, she has directed the Gender and Policy Program at the School
of International and Public Affairs. She is also co-director of the
women’s Leadership Program at the Columbia Business School. She
is a former Kennedy Fellow, a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, and the Century Association. In the 1980s she was the
first woman to head the Economic Policy Council - a nonprofit
composed of 125 business and labor leaders.
She is the author of 10 critically acclaimed books as well as numerous articles in the Harvard Business Review, the New York Times,
the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs and the International Herald
Tribune. She is currently ranked #11 on the Thinkers50 list of the
world’s most influential business gurus.
Ms. Hewlett held a book launch for Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor in early September 2013 at the New York Stock Exchange. In
her own words this was the third of her books to be launched there.
The launch was broadcast on Book TV (C-SPAN 2) which is where
I first saw and heard her personal presentation. I was fascinated by
her accent and her general demeanor and I downloaded her book
to my iPad later the same day.
Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor appears to be a collaborative work
26
LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
based on research conducted by the members of the Task Force for
Talent Innovation. The research is based on “surveys underwritten
and shaped by the senior executives” of many of the companies
which are represented by the Task Force. There is no other specification or methodology cited. To my mind this immediately screamed
tautology and seemed very self-serving, but I plodded on. As the
book’s sole author Ms. Hewlett uses the results of the research
to support the “stories” that are actually the main content of the
book. As noted in the acknowledgement pages and introduction
all the “stories” represent the actual interviews of successful and
less successful executives and senior management employees of the
Task Force affiliated companies (such as American Express, AT&T,
General Electric, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Booz-Allen-Hamilton). All
of these interviews were conducted by the author herself. All are
used to illustrate the various aspects of sponsorship and the hard
work and ingenuity required of a protégé. The author’s stated purpose is to improve the opportunities in the workforce for women
and minority employees by fostering an environment where talent
is recognized and nurtured. By this means employees may rise
through the ranks to the highest echelons within their companies
(the corner or C-suites), and conversely the companies benefit by
attracting to their workforce employees with drive and vision who
will strengthen the “brand.”
The target readership of this book is, I believe, female but is
inclusive of all ethnicities. The book does cite research figures
related to minority groups and males; however the interviews by
the author of African-American and Caucasian males are very
few. The book contains several tables comparing and contrasting
the key terms, particularly mentor/mentee and sponsor/protégé. I