Yuliya and Anna, key members of the Women@eBay Community of Inclusion (COI) in Prague, are leading efforts to create meaningful opportunities for working mothers. With a shared passion for gender equity and professional advancement, they have initiated a mentorship program in collaboration with Femme Palette, providing mothers with the tools and support needed to navigate career challenges. We sat down with Yuliya and Anna to discuss their motivation, the impact of their initiative, and how it aligns with eBay's broader goals of diversity and inclusion.
Yuliya: I’m originally from Belarus but have been living in Prague for the past 18 years. My career journey includes recruitment, data analysis and product ownership. Currently, I’m a program manager at Zeta Global working on eBay’s site for the past 5+ years. For the most part of those years I have also been a part of the Women@eBay Community of Inclusion (COI), which brings new perspectives, ideas and impact to both my professional and personal life. eBay opened up this COI also to supplier staff working in the Prague office.
Anna: I'm originally from Greece. Therefore, the sea, the sun and summer have a special place in my heart! I've studied economics and applied informatics but was won over by marketing quite early in my career. I've been supporting the CRM marketing efforts on the eBay account since 2020. Shortly after I joined the team, I became part of the Women@eBay COI. While this is an eBay initiative, they kindly invited partners working in the Prague office also to join. This is one of the most important things I do and I’m proud of as part of my job.
Anna & Yuliya: Within the Women@eBay COI, our primary objective has always been to live up to our vision and mission of raising awareness about gender equity and bringing equal opportunities for career advancement across our diverse and skillful community. We acknowledge that working mothers often face particular challenges in their efforts to progress in their professional life. Considering that, we wanted to introduce an initiative that would help them boost their confidence in parallel with their skillset and support them in becoming strong candidates for positions they aspire to undertake. Hence, we came up with the idea of providing them with an opportunity to leverage knowledge and skills from other professionals via mentorships.
Anna: As part of our COI efforts, every year, we make sure to celebrate and recognise our dear colleagues who are also great mothers and fathers. This initiative was organized in the context of Mothers Day 2024. This year, we thought of offering a more meaningful and impactful gift. In that, we had support from other COIs, our collaboration with whom is something we’re very happy about. We’re delighted to be able to provide such wonderful opportunities to our community members.
Yuliya: Selection process can be a sensitive topic, so this is the part we really concentrated on, especially since we could only provide a mentoring program to 3 people. We ran the initial idea through our Prague Women@eBay team, sourcing feedback and making sure that we are as inclusive and fair as possible. We then created an anonymous form where mothers who were interested in the mentoring program could drop their motivational letters. The plan then was that a committee of mothers would vote for the top three letters from the anonymous pool. And this is how we got the final list of participants. We are happy that our current mentees had the chance to participate and make their desire for learning and development come true.
Yuliya & Anna: We hope that this program will help our mentees to have a focused time that will be just about them, about their career path, their development and whatever they need in their professional lives, be it developing stronger self-confidence or creating career goals and paths to follow them through. Our mentees have specified quite different fields of interest but have one thing in common and that's motivation and enthusiasm. We personally have no specific expectations on the acquired skills or their development. We do wish though that they enjoy this wonderful journey and make the most out of it in the way each one of those wants to.
Anna: eBay’s company culture, as internally called “eBay's DNA”, is intertwined with the idea of nurturing a diverse and inclusive working environment. That’s also aligned with Zeta Global’s values. As far as the COI is concerned, there are lots of initiatives throughout the year. We never forget about our colleagues on parental leave and try to include them as much as possible (gifting, events etc.) into the activities we organize.
Yuliya: We have various degrees of support and activity in parental groups. Largely, it depends on demographics of a given site and a focus that a community has. For example, last yearI we had a family-friendly event, where parents could bring their children for Halloween celebrations in the office. We had several stations - drum playing workshop, face painting, and pumpkin carving, all done with themed decorations and costumes - it was a lot of fun for both parents and kids! Other initiatives that are noteworthy to mention are parental buddy groups, where new parents can get advice or just exchange experiences and find empathy and moral support if they need it. We also have panel discussions, where parents share how they run their day-to-day work & family activities, how they manage to find balance and motivation - this is all open to larger company audiences, where everyone can join in and ask questions as well. So there is a lot going on and we see people engaged and wanting to give back to communities and share their observations and tips & tricks, so that others can benefit from their experiences.
Yuliya & Anna: First of all, the approach should be in a way product-minded - think of your customers (e.g. working parents) and what would bring the most value to them. It is not necessary that all employees have the same views and goals when it comes to career development. Having an idea of what people are interested in increases the chances of supporting initiatives that speak to employees' minds and work to both their and the company's benefit in the longer term. Secondly, never underestimate the fact that such initiatives are long term investments which will pay off in due time. People are great assets to their teams - with the right tools, they can grow great businesses. Last but not least, even if budget limitations do not permit huge support, there's always a way to advocate for equal opportunities, build business cases, raise awareness and as a result increase funds to facilitate career progression. Start small (search for free consultation, attend seminars, workshops) and grow big (more tailored 121 sessions) with mentoring!
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