Hi everybody, it's Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast. If it's your first time listening, welcome.

This is a weekly podcast. Normally, you hear from me and Sarah and we talk about the ups and downs and the ins and outs of squiggly careers.

But today I'm actually not joined by Sarah. I'm going to be joined by somebody called Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who you may or may not be aware of.

I'll tell you a bit more about Sylvia in a second. And we are going to talk about the topic of sponsorship.

And this is part of our Ask the Expert series where we find people to talk to who know a lot about a very specific topic that we think can help you right now in your squiggly career.

So let me tell you a little bit more

about Sylvia and her work. So Sylvia's an economist, she's an author and she's an expert

in talent development. She's got a PhD in economics. She's the author of 10 articles on Harvard

Business Review and also the author of 10 books, including two of my favourites, which are relevant to today's topic.

And that is the first one, forget a mentor, find a sponsor, and also the sponsor effect.

I first saw Sylvia speak when I was at BP. So this is about 10 years ago. And her work has

stuck with me since then. I think sponsorship's a really important part of how people can

succeed in squiggly careers. And she's such a great expert on this topic. And I don't see

that much written. There aren't that many books on sponsorship. And Sylvia has written quite a few.

And if you actually would like to hear from somebody else on this topic, I really like Carla Harris's

TED Talk.

I'll link to that so that you've got it as well in the show notes if you want to dive a bit

deeper into the topic. But in the conversation Sylvia and I have, we discuss the difference

between sponsorship and mentorship and actually why they're not mutually exclusive. So you can

have a sponsor and a mentor and they do something slightly different for you in your

career. We talk about why sponsorship is a two-way street, so how you as the person being

sponsored can benefit, but also the benefit that the sponsor gets as well. And one of the other

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