The day after we announced the mentee-mentor pairs for our 2024-25 Mentorship Program for Ethnically Diverse Entrepreneurs, we conducted a training session for the mentors and ICF Hong Kong Charter Chapter coaches at the Hive Poho.
Read on to learn how this cohort of mentors and coaches demonstrates the reciprocal nature of FSI’s community for ethnically diverse entrepreneurs!
Empowering Mentors and Coaches to Help Aspiring Entrepreneurs Achieve Success
With our annual Mentorship Program in its third iteration, we are as excited as ever to support aspiring and budding entrepreneurs from ethnically diverse backgrounds in the next six months. As a core initiative of our Mentorship Program, we provided mentor entrepreneurs and coaches with the skills, knowledge, and resources they need to uplift mentee entrepreneurs through effective mentorship and coaching.
The 10 mentors and 12 coaches, hailing from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Canada, Hong Kong, and the African Continent, gathered on 7 September 2024 for a two-hour orientation and networking session to learn about FSI’s Mentorship Program, get to know each other, and share knowledge and advice on ways to best support the mentee entrepreneurs.
They also learned about the different roles and responsibilities of a mentor and a coach, how to prepare for meeting their mentees or coachees, and the soft skills necessary for effective mentoring and coaching, such as empathy, active listening, cultural sensitivity etc. Additionally, the mentors and coaches were encouraged to tap into the rich library of business resources, guides, and templates publicly accessible in our Entrepreneur’s Toolkit, whether for themselves or their mentees or coachees.
Meet the Mentors
The reciprocal nature of FSI’s community for ethnically diverse entrepreneurs is reflected in the familiar faces amongst this year’s mentors, including Naman Tekriwal, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Breer Limited, who, together with Innocent Mutanga, Founder and Director of Africa Center Hong Kong, helped last year’s mentee Kebba Jallow successfully build a business from scratch. Joining Naman from Breer is Anushka Purohit, CEO and Co-founder, another inspiring young entrepreneur who has been serving as a mentor since our inaugural program in 2022.
Also supporting our program and mentee entrepreneurs for the third year is Wilson Tai, Co-founder and Chief Operation Officer of FundFluent, whose mission-aligned partnership with FSI goes beyond mentorship – FundFluent’s other Co-founder, Jenny Au, also hosted workshops to help mentee entrepreneurs unlock funding readiness and identify suitable financing opportunities. Said Wilson: “It’s always great to join FSI’s activities as I get to meet like-minded people and feel the support from the community.”
Another great example of reciprocity in our community is former mentee, Jerwine Bonafe-Que, Managing Director of The Blomstre, joining the program this year as a mentor, with the aim of supporting entrepreneurs looking to grow their business but unsure where to start – entrepreneurs in the same situation as Jerwine and her husband and Co-founder, Aaron Que, before they joined FSI’s Mentorship Program in 2022. Said Jerwine: “I’ve been in a position of being a mentee and now a mentor. This is a great opportunity to discover the biggest ‘why’ and wear the most helpful working hat depending on my mentee’s needs.”
Jerwine will be reuniting with Henry Kam Yuen Yeung, mentor to The Blomstre back in 2022 and the Co-founders of A Collective Space this year. As a partner at Carys Limited, Henry is yet another long-time supporter of our program.
We are equally delighted to welcome other seasoned entrepreneurs to our mentors group this year: May Tsui, a founding team member of FundFluent; Robin Wong, owner of Bizwizpartnership Ltd. and experienced mentor who offered his generous support to FSI’s Community Connections Program by helping to curate a business guide for under-resourced entrepreneurs (coming soon!); Hamid Naseem, Founder of Marhaba Coaching and Consulting; and Belinda Wong, Director of Leader Corporate Services Limited.
Meet the Coaches
The same kind of dedicated long-time support can be seen in the four ICF Hong Kong Charter Chapter coaches who join our program again to help under-resourced entrepreneurs grow professionally and personally. Meet Magdalene Wong, who helped Kebba Jallow build the confidence he needed to build his auto recycling business from scratch early this year; John Azzo, who coached The Blomstre previously; Cynthia Lai, who coached Shilpa Pednekar and enabled her to expand Shilpa’s Masala Mill overseas in 2022; and Anjali Daswani, who coached Laibah Bibi in last year’s program.
Other coaches new to the program are: Bhakti Mathur, Daniel Chan, Jimmy To, Lilian Lui, Mona Lee, Natalie O’Brien, Philbert Chin, and Rita Tsui.
Get Involved
We would like to thank our venue partner, the Hive Poho, for its invaluable support to a small tax-exempt charity organization like FSI, and for offering a discount for the Hive Poho membership to members of this cohort of FSI’s Mentorship Program.
Stay tuned to this space for more updates on the mentee entrepreneurs’ progress in the 2024-25 Mentorship Program! If you’re interested in supporting Hong Kong’s under-resourced entrepreneurs, get in touch with us at cbs@shared-impact.com.
