Laura Paonessa
The Global Competitiveness Leadership Program (GCL) was founded in 2007. Since its inception, GCL has welcomed over 600 emerging leaders from 23 Latin American countries. GCL participants have generated hundreds of initiatives to date and impacted more than 2.7 million people in the region.GCL represents a life-changing experience for its participants and fosters a tight-knit and dynamic network of innovative leaders that supports positive transformation in Latin America. The GCL Alumni Network is a student-led initiative that serves to unite and connect all Global Competitiveness Leadership Program (GCL) alumni throughout the years and foster links with other Georgetown alumni. The network aims to promote regional competitiveness by organizing and hosting local events and strengthening the collaboration among alumni beyond their time at Georgetown.
The goals of the GCL Alumni Mentorship Program are to provide coaching and practical professional guidance to students on the feasibility and implementation of their GCL projects and to facilitate connections with other professionals and experts in the area. GCL mentors are critical actors in the program.
Skills / Knowledge
- Project Development
- Leadership
- Innovation
- Latin America
- Public Policy
- Social Impact
- Communications
- Coaching
- Mentorship
Issued on
Expires on
Earning Criteria
Required
Your role as a GCL mentor is as follows:
1) Accompany your mentees throughout the GCL Program, providing support based on your own experience in the GCL Program.
2) Constantly question, challenge, and push your mentees to identify, justify, and test their working hypotheses. We hope that you can apply your experience with social impact projects to help the GCLs shortcut the learning process as they construct their business models and design implementation strategies for their projects.
3) Identify and connect our GCLs with further support, resources, contacts, and capital (when appropriate) that can support their progress. Our hope is that your involvement in the region will expand the GCLs’ networks and access to people and potential resources.
Each mentor will be assigned between 1 and 3 GCL mentees. The LALP Team will assign mentors and mentees, and these assignments will not be changed barring exceptional circumstances. While some mentors possess specialized experience in their mentees’ areas of
interest, many times it is not possible to pair all participants with mentors who work in their fields or areas of interest. As former students in the GCL Program, GCL alumni can contribute their knowledge of project design based on their own experiences as leaders carrying out social impact projects in the region. Mentors are expected to attend two mentorship training sessions led by Collective Academy, an initiative of Patricio Bichara (GCL 2009, Mexico), as well as a business model canvas session with GCL lecturer Ricardo Teran.
Mentors will support their GCL mentee(s) throughout the program for a minimum of 30 minutes per week for ten weeks.