Olgica Mitrevska of Organon on why so many women treat fertility as a topic for "later," how the Plodnost pod kontrolou initiative is trying to change that, and why she believes fertility literacy belongs in the same conversation as career planning, not separate from it.
We are incredibly proud to announce the winners of our 2026 Mentor Awards! This is the second edition of our awards, and once again, we are in awe of the remarkable contributions from our mentors. What we do at Femme Palette would never be possible without our amazing community of mentors, which has continued to grow over the years.
Monika Dubová joined Sazka (now Allwyn Czech Republic) in 2020 as its first front-end IT analyst, coming from banking. She now leads a front-end team of up to 40 people. Her big break came leading the analysis team on the UK National Lottery transformation, which grew from 3 to 40 people, before she returned to Prague in a leadership role. She balances the job with raising two kids thanks to Allwyn's flexible work model, and values mentoring, collaboration, and Allwyn's openness to good ideas. Her advice: "Don't hesitate, just give it a try. It's great here."
A decade in developer marketing at Microsoft and TigerData taught Lucie Šimečková how to do the work. It didn't teach her how to sell it. When she went freelance after parental leave, sales and client outreach were completely new territory, and her Femme Palette mentor became the person who helped her figure it out, one partnership contact at a time. Read on!
A child falls asleep. You have two hours. For Lucie Pazderská, that was enough to start finding her way back into a senior marketing career after parental leave, without waiting for a full-time return or a grand plan. She skipped the all-or-nothing comeback most people assume they need, took it in small, flexible steps instead, and ended up somewhere she didn't expect: a job-shared Senior Brand Manager role she actually loves. Here's what that path really looked like.
Most adults can name the last time they made a close friend without trying, and can't quite explain why it never happened again. Turns out it's not about you, it's structural: the things that made friendship easy (school, dorms, a first job full of other new people) quietly disappear after your twenties, and this piece gets into why, plus what actually works instead.
Bettina Guirkinger works with global companies to stop losing women after maternity leave, and lately she's focused that work on keeping women in tech. This year, mid-pivot from a B2C to a B2B business model, she needed the same kind of support she gives others. Here's what came out of being matched with her mentor, Zuzana, including the moment she almost talked herself into a 9-to-5.
The number that talks most people out of a career change is almost always wrong. Most people who want something different never even send an application, they just do the math on years left and quietly give up. Here's what the UK data actually says about switching careers at 30, 40, and well beyond.
Aleksandra Arutsiunian has spent over a decade in travel technology, leading international teams and global partnerships. But it is her work as a Femme Palette mentor that she talks about with the most warmth. In this spotlight, she opens up about how she came into mentoring almost by accident, why first-time leaders are her favourite people to work with, and the lesson about confidence that her mentees keep teaching her.
.png)
.png)
