Mentoring

Key to personal and professional development is mentoring and we have partnered with Keysight Technologies to offer a valuable mentoring program.

At the end of 2021, we successfully completed 1,000 hours of individual mentoring for close to 400 mentees with almost 100 mentors.

Mentees are typically looking for support with their soft- and career development skills, basic quantum tech knowledge, and startup 101.

Our mentors include some of the most renowned names in quantum from academic, business and ventures.

We use the MentorcliQ platform to run 6 months long cohorts of mentoring with the mentee leading her individual relationship with her mentor. Every cohort starts by setting goals, schedule their session and has to regularly report progress and submit evaluations.

This is a rigorous progress that we expect mentees to take as seriously as our mentors do.

“Being in the end of her bachelor’s degree, my mentee was facing several upcoming decisions related to career paths. She was interested in exploring opportunities in quantum technologies, so we spent our time to discuss quantum computing and quantum communications. To be a mentor in the WIQ program was a truly great and rewarding experience that I can warmly recommend.”

Philip Krantz, PhD

“I really appreciate this program.  It’s awesome to be able to connect with someone in the industry to share a moment of thoughts, opinions, and experiences.”

Natalie Hawkins

“I think the greatest thing that we can receive is encouragement. I am so grateful to be part of the Women in Quantum Mentoring Program, which showed me new stages of opportunity and provided me with all the support to work towards my objectives.
I appreciate and treasure the time, advice, guidance, and kindness that great and successful women have shared with me through this mentorship.”

Claudia Zendejas-Morales

“I had the great fortune of mentoring two quantum PhD students each within two years of graduation.  Both were certain they didn’t want to stay in academia but didn’t know where else their skillsets would apply nor how to be successful in the job application and interview process.  My mentees selected me, in part, because of my background outside of academia as I could talk about the differences between working in industry and research labs.  One mentee was interested in working at start-ups.  She created a list of start-ups that were interesting to her, we read and discussed that company’s research, then, if she remained interested, helped guide her towards having conversations with technical leads at those companies.  My other mentee was well accomplished but reluctant to directly highlight on her resume nor in conversation.  We worked through updating her resume to succinctly highlight objective accomplishments as well as had her find a job posting she found interesting and go through a mock interview process to build confidence in effectively communicating skillsets and accomplishments.”

Eric Holland, PhD

“My mentee is considering starting their own company and wanted to discuss several ideas about positioning, go to market models, value proposition and more. I was exposed to a lot of interesting and fundamental problems and new ideas. Going into this I didn’t think I would get as excited and learn as many things as I have. I found out that it was a learning and growing path for both of us.”

Yianni Gamvros