Schedule your complimentary Leadership Strategy Call.
Your mentor gave you excellent career advice. So why do you still feel vulnerable when organizational changes happen?
Here's the truth most women leaders don't realize: mentorship gets you guidance, but sponsorship gets you protection, access, and advocacy when decisions are made behind closed doors.
If you've ever been blindsided by budget cuts, left out of high-visibility opportunities, or found out about critical changes after everyone else—this episode will show you exactly what's missing from your leadership strategy.
In this episode, you will learn:
- The Critical Mentor vs. Sponsor Gap: Why mentors provide advice but can't give you the advocacy, access, and protection you need during organizational changes, budget discussions, and navigating organizational politics.
- How to Identify Potential Sponsors: The 3 specific criteria for identifying who can actually advocate for you in decision-making rooms (Hint: it's not just about finding senior leaders who like you).
- 5 Authentic Cultivation Strategies: Practical, non-transactional approaches to building sponsor relationships—including how to create strategic visibility, make it easy for sponsors to advocate for you, and ask for advocacy without feeling uncomfortable.
- The Year-End Conversation Framework: 3 critical conversations to have before December 31st that will position you strategically for 2026, including exact scripts for talking with your manager, potential sponsors, and mentors.
- Your 'Minimum Viable' Action Plan: 3 high-impact actions you can complete in the next six weeks (even during the busiest time of year) that will build your career resilience for 2026.
Why This Matters Right Now (Your Final 2025 Opportunity)
The strategic conversations happening in your company right now will shape what 2026 looks like for your career. Budget allocations are being finalized, strategic initiatives are being planned, and leadership is deciding who they need in which roles.
If you don't have sponsors advocating for your interests in these conversations, you are being left out.
This is not work to put off until January. It's work to do today.
In exactly 7 days, the doors close for our final Ignite Your Leadership Power Accelerator cohort of 2025.
We kick off on November 20th to implement this exact work together, in real-time, during the most critical 6-week window of the year.
If you are ready to stop feeling vulnerable and start building the strategic relationships that give you real career resilience, this is your moment.
Schedule a call to see if the Accelerator is a fit for you (Doors close on November 19)
Featured Resources:
- Join the Accelerator: This is your last chance in 2025. [Click here to schedule your call and apply]
- Related Episode: Episode 112: "Why Hard Work Isn't Getting You Promoted"
Connect with Kele for more leadership insights:
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.