Rabia de Lande Long on The Importance of Sponsors

Originally posted October 18th, 2017

Rabia de Lande Long, our moderator for the upcoming event on Sponsors: How to Find and Manage This Essential Relationship, gives us insight into how this theme was conceived, and why it’s such an important conversation to have.

Rabia de Lande Long, moderating our Changing the Conversation event in September 2016:

After facilitating a number of very exciting Changing the Conversation panel discussions over the past year, I was super excited to design a panel that would explore a few special relationships among business executives. Whether called sponsors, mentors, or consiglieres, the roles of interest here are the ones that have enriched both parties.

Many of us have been fortunate to have had a more senior executive offer us support and guidance along the way. Some of us have been supremely lucky to have struck a special relationship with someone that goes both ways – ones in which both parties have been enriched through the relationship.

To that end, we are thrilled to have three sets of partners coming together later this month to talk about their personal experiences and growth through their special relationships:

• A trained architect attempts to renovate her Brooklyn townhouse, and ends up launching the award-winning service Sweeten. Join us to find out how she and her mentor, a veteran real estate industry CEO, got together and benefited from their combined experience in the for-profit and not-for-profit worlds.

• Two women work together at The Economist, one of the most respected magazines in the world. One spends her career there and the other, after 17 years, has a short stint at Conde Nast before spending the next ten years with the Harvard Business Review. Join us to hear about their special 20-year relationship.

• A white Nickelodeon executive joins Black Entertainment Networks as the Head of Content Strategy, Acquisition and Scheduling, managing a team of African-American executives. Join us to learn how he and his number two female executive both benefited and grew during their three years together, and how he positioned her to succeed him when he launched his own business.

We’re looking forward to hearing our panelists stories, and meeting all of you, on October 26th at 6:30pm at the SoHo offices of our generous host, Zocdoc. You can register for our event here.