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Looking back at Avancer’s inaugural program – but this is just the beginning…

Capgemini
March 5, 2021

Capgemini’s Avancer program was centered on the idea of helping women successfully climb the corporate ladder, without sacrificing their personal or professional well-being.

Avancer in a nutshell

In the inaugural cycle of the Avancer program, 146 Capgemini women in mid-level roles from all around the world worked with 79 mentors, both men and women, to learn new skills and apply them to their careers to create future female C-suite managers today.

Over the last six-months, participants attended a series of modules designed to help them gain the skills they need to move into more senior management roles. These modules were also backed by a series of monthly Learner’s Corner meeting, which aimed to reinforce Capgemini’s leadership dimensions, and how they could be leveraged within a real world business environment.

They were also a safe space where our Avancees could discuss what they were learning, how they were approaching assignments, or simply acted as somewhere where participants could just bounce ideas off each other.

Recognized for our skills

How do we know Avancer was successful? Well, first of all, we received a satisfaction rating from our participants across all webinars of over 95%.

But that’s not all, our participants also told us how much the course has improved their confidence – particularly their presentation skills – which has led to some of them receiving more responsibility in their day-to-day roles. Meanwhile, other participants got the skills they needed to even switch practices – starting a new career path entirely different from what they were doing before.

All of this success was driven by the programs agility which enabled us to observe, design, and redesign content to suit the specific needs of our participants. For example, we decided to bring in one expert to talk to the group about building their confidence and using their knowledge during meetings and presentations

Avancer in numbers:
  • 146 active participants across 10 countries
  • 3,500 learning hours fully online
  • 79 mentors
  • 6 self-reflection sessions
  • 7 executive webinars
  • Over 95% satisfaction rating across all webinars

What Avancer meant to our participants

Don’t take our word on how successful our Avancer program was. Take a look at what some of our Avancees had to say about the program itself. We asked them: why did you want to be involved with this program? What are your career goals and what are some of the most important things you have learned from being involved with Avancer? Here’s what some of them said:

“I wanted to join the Avancer program to be able to interact with women in all parts of Capgemini in order to improve my knowledge of the business. I also wanted to learn new ways on how to approach my business and improve myself as a leader. Having a community of women in the same role as me and learning their perspectives has helped me to grow even more as a leader.”

Samantha Dort, Operations Team Lead

“My goal for the next 5–10 years is to drive a positive change within Capgemini as a director. I also want to capitalize on my analytical skills to inspire process improvement for internal and external stakeholders.”

Athnee Ononiewu, FPIA team

“I have introduced myself to the digital transformation world. In addition, I have learned the best practices needed to become a business builder and develop a profit mindset. This enabled me to enjoy every learning activity, every networking opportunity, and has injected more passion and enthusiasm into my day-to-day activities.”

Gabriela Aguilar, Learning & Development Team Lead

What’s next for Avancer?

Avancer’s inaugural run may be over, but we don’t plan on stopping here. Over the next few months, we plan on spreading the benefits of Avancer across the entire Capgemini Group so that women working for us across industries and the globe will advance further in their careers. Watch this space!

Read other blogs about Capgemini’s Avancer program:

This blog was written by Susan Steer and Vanessa Tullio. For more information about Capgemini’s Avancer Program and how it is creating the female leaders of tomorrow today, reach out to Vanessa Tullio and Susan Steer

Susan Steer is a Human Resources Leader and member of the Global Learning & Development team for the Business Services BU – North America. She is involved in every step of the employee life cycle. In addition to strategic support, she guides and mentors employees, enabling them to flourish, stay engaged and reach their potential.

Vanessa Tullio is an L&D manager with deep knowledge on facilitating learning interactions and designing developing programs. She is a professional coach and mentor, a Capgemini University facilitator, and she also handles global learning and development for Capgemini leadership and certification programs.