Press Release: Mentor Marketplace

Imagine you’re a young woman who’s the first in your family to attend college and you’re trying to understand your career options. Or perhaps you’re a more experienced woman who feels stuck in a role and you’re looking for ways to reinvent yourself in an entirely new career you wish you had pursued from the beginning? Or maybe you’re a woman growing up in one region of the world who wants to explore the opportunity to work in another? Or what if you had to take a break to have your family, but want to get back in the game?

Regardless of your scenario, imagine you could choose from a rich portfolio of experienced working women from a diverse set of roles, industries, and backgrounds and have a quick, life-changing conversation on the phone to get their advice, all for free? That’s exactly what Christina Van Houten, the founder of Women at Work, a new platform of resources and engagement for working women, is trying to achieve. Mentor Marketplace leverages a traditional online shopping cart platform to enable “Demand” women—those looking for guidance or mentorship—to peruse a rich portfolio of “Supply” women—more experienced professionals in diverse roles and industries. From there, Demand women essentially buy “Office Hours,” or 30-minute calls that connect Demand with Supply from all over the world. Demand women might choose more than one Supply woman for their shopping cart if they’re exploring more than one field or are looking to achieve more than one perspective. Behind the scenes, Women at Work brokers the connection between Supply and Demand and the conversations happen from there.

Christina launched Mentor Marketplace because she always wanted to give back to emerging women looking to build their careers, but couldn’t commit to anything long-term as a busy technology executive who’s mostly on the road. The new networking platform was born out of her wanting to create an opportunity for herself and so many other busy working women who are eager to engage with emerging women in a defined way that requires low investment of time while yielding a high impact and big return.

A 20-year veteran of the enterprise technology arena and nearly 40-year working girl, Christina launched Women at Work to support working women at all stages of their careers. Beyond Mentor Marketplace, she also launched her first of three books in a series called Men@Work: A career girl’s guide to navigating male archetypes. Two additional guides in the series, Fashion@Work and Babies@Work, will release in 2018. Additionally, the Women at Work platform features several other initiatives designed to drive engagement between working women with the goal of providing support to them and fostering connections. These initiatives include Women@Work(outs) fitness program and Women@Work(shops) leadership and business training.

For more information, please contact Annie Sinsabaugh, Content Strategy Lead, at annie@womenatwork.com.