Linda Salek was a top sales development and training executive at Bayer Diagnostics in Tarrytown when a mass mailing from Westchester Community College caught her interest.
The college was using a gender-equity grant to start a Workplace Culture Coaching program that would link female students with female executives and professionals in Westchester”™s business world. Adele Shansky, the college”™s program liaison, was recruiting successful career women like Salek as volunteer mentors.
“I was the first mentor” to sign up for the program, Salek said recently in her office at the volunteer center on the WCC campus in Valhalla. About 15 students participated in the inaugural program.
Fifteen years and more than 300 mentored students later, the now-retired corporate executive serves as director of the workplace program, teaming with Shansky, the mentor liaison. “I sensed the program had so much value from what I saw on the corporate side that I wanted to see that it continued,” said Salek, who began her career in medical technology in her native Canada.
Second-year students at the college, referred to the program by professors in the business department, receive classroom training in individual communication styles, workplace etiquette and personal branding, resume writing and interviewing for jobs. Armed with personal business cards for networking, they venture to their mentors”™ workplaces.
Those mentors have introduced students to more than 25 companies that span a range of industries and professions in Westchester, among them Eileen Fisher, MasterCard Worldwide, PepsiCo Inc., MBIA Insurance, Combe Products Inc., Cuddy & Feder L.L.P., Hudson Valley Bank, O”™Connor Davies Munns & Dobbins L.L.P. and the New York Power Authority.
Marian Chang, an associate banker at Citi Private Bank in Manhattan, was “kind of terrified” when as a WCC student about seven years ago she first visited her mentor, Mary Cahill, a senior manager at Power Authority headquarters in White Plains.
“I was a very shy young girl and there was a lot about the world I didn”™t know,” Chang said. “I thought that it was a very scary place, and it absolutely was. I was right about that. It”™s good for you, but it”™s also kind of scary, especially when you”™re young.”
“It was just an eye-opening experience,” said Chang, who enjoys a lasting friendship with her mentor. “Those 10 months that I spent with her were all about exploration of possibilities.”
“It”™s a real discovery process for them,” Salek said. “We do find that through this program students are able to explore what their careers might look like when they get to the corporate side. Some of them are affirmed and some change” their career choices. “That”™s a major benefit of the program for the students.”
The workplace program can also change students”™ preconceptions of corporate America, Salek said. “They don”™t expect people in corporate to be as friendly as they are. That”™s the shock factor.”
Executives, many of whom “are looking for a way to give back,” also benefit from the mentoring program, Salek said. “It makes you be the best that you can be on the days that the students are there. They really want to learn. I always felt that they gave as much to me as I gave to them.”
Last year, the workplace program was opened to male business students at WCC. The more inclusive program is funded by memorial donations made at the untimely death in 2011 of Charles W. Brown, chairman of the Business Council of Westchester and a founding co-owner of C.W. Brown Inc. in Armonk. His widow and business partner, Renee Brown, CEO of the construction company and a workplace mentor, asked that all contributions go to the WCC program.
In 2011, corporate Westchester opened its offices to 25 WCC students, including international business students from Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, France, China, Korea, Romania, Bosnia, Belarus, Russia and Moldova.
“This program is unique to Westchester Community College,” Salek said. “We haven”™t found another program like it. We”™re a little bit of a gem within the SUNY system.”
