CSweetener
CSweetener is HLTH Foundation’s free virtual mentorship program for goal-oriented women and nonbinary healthcare leaders, offering a year of guidance with senior executive and C-level mentors from within the health sector.
With a track record of cultivating leadership skills, fostering strategic thinking and enriching professional networks for its mentees, CSweetener is a must for healthcare’s rising executives and entrepreneurs.
Companies seeking to hire, retain and develop the best talent in healthcare will find affinity with our community as sponsors of the program.
CSweetener mentors enjoy rewarding relationships with their mentees as ‘career sherpas’ and connections with peers from the upper ranks of healthcare leadership.
Our Impact
What Mentees Say
Our Experts
Our Sponsors
Our Why
Gender parity in healthcare leadership has far to go: Women occupy only 25% of senior executive roles and less than 20% of C-Suite positions. Representation of women drops off at every increase in role level, but most prominently after the middle rungs of management–with the steepest impact on women of color.
CSweetener offers access to mentorship beginning at mid-level and supports leaders all the way into the C-Suite, where women are less likely to receive mentorship. Mentors also receive assistance, via convenient peer access on the CSweetener platform.
Kindling the Network Effect of Good Leadership
When CSweetener mentees are promoted into the higher ranks of leadership, it’s a life-changing experience and represents the fulfillment of personal goals. Additionally, their executive teams acquire valuable diversity of perspective that expands the capacity for competitive decision making–which is demonstrated by over a decade of research to improve financial performance. According to gender parity research, their employers also frequently gain new insight into customers.
Research shows that mentoring women further opens doors to improved wellbeing, both for mentees and those in their care, by creating opportunities for higher lifetime earnings.
Widening the lens even further: with global systems of care under duress, integrating leaders that have been prepared to think strategically and act decisively, and can fill longstanding gaps in leadership, offer the best chance for innovative solutions.
And it all starts with CSweetener.
Don’t wait to get involved.
Eligibility
Mentees
CSweetener is free to eligible applicants: women and nonbinary healthcare professionals that hold at least a director/mid-level role, up through C-level, with 10+ years of industry experience. We warmly welcome intersectional applicants.
Mentors
Volunteers (of any gender) with 20+ years in healthcare, holding a senior-executive or C-level role and willing to take part in at least two, 30-minute meetings per month, for at least a year.
Sponsors
Healthcare employers and investors with a stake in attracting and developing great talent and championing gender parity.
How It Works
CSweetener mentees are accepted for a one-year term and receive 12 session credits, each representing a 30-minute, virtual mentoring session. Mentees must use at least one credit per month and can use them more frequently as desired.
New mentors and mentees fill out a profile indicating their skills, experience, goals and preferences, which helps us recommend matches–but the choice of mentors is entirely up to the mentee. Algorithmic support and search capability support optimal pairings. Mentees can work with one or many mentors during their tenure in the program.
CSweetener mentors must be willing to take at least two, 30-minute meetings per month and be available over at least one year for mentoring sessions, with unlimited tenure. In order to facilitate scheduling, mentors provide 3-4 available time slots per month. The number of actual sessions booked is limited to each mentor’s preferred monthly limit.
It’s easy! Apply or sponsor today!