Center for Mentoring Excellence

In a dynamic business landscape, attracting, retaining, and developing diverse talent while fostering an inclusive and engaged workforce is crucial for organizations. Many companies have recognized the importance of effective mentoring relationships in enhancing workplace engagement levels—a need that is more pronounced in remote and hybrid work environments.

The Center for Mentoring Excellence (CME), a business consulting company with proven expertise and a custom-design approach, is a strategic partner in addressing organizations’ mentoring needs. It provides innovative mentoring solutions that are grounded in the principles of adult learning and evidence-based research to create an inclusive culture within organizations.

CME serves a wide range of clients, including Fortune 500 companies, mid-market organizations, government agencies, NGOs, and not-for-profits seeking to build engaging and inclusive organizational cultures.

“We view our customers as partners and provide them with custom-designed mentoring solutions to meet their desired outcomes,” says Lisa Fain, CEO of Center for Mentoring Excellence.

True to its name, a culture of continuous learning and maintaining excellence is fostered at CME. Designing and piloting mentoring initiatives, training for mentors and mentees, support to program administrators, and advice on finding the right technology to support their mentoring teams are just a few of the services it offers.

The CME team prioritizes a consultative approach replete with ongoing feedback from mentors and mentees, which facilitates development of tailored solutions to meet clients’ specific needs. Working closely with clients enables it to determine the desired outcomes and identify the appropriate metrics to gauge progress and success.

This personalized approach ensures that mentoring solutions align with organizational contexts, desired goals and workplace engagement needs of each client.

CME also provides guidance for establishing successful mentoring and developmental relationships, as well as building a thriving, inclusive, and cohesive culture within the context of a hybrid work environment.

Its signature program, Starting Strong, is designed to assist mentors and mentees in creating a playbook for the first 90 days of their relationship, and beyond. It is based on the eponymous book by CME’s founder Lois Zachary and her former colleague Lory Fischler.

Clients often elect to have CME conduct surveys and touch-base interviews to provide feedback and measure mentoring outcomes. In the touch-base interviews, mentors and mentees answer targeted questions and receive specialized coaching to enhance the quality and effectiveness of their mentoring relationships. Survey data is thoroughly analyzed to extract insights for recommendations on improving engagement levels and program outcomes.

We view our customers as partners and provide them with custom-designed mentoring solutions to meet their desired outcomes

CME has scripted many success stories over the years, and one that stands out is that of a global manufacturing organization that wanted to ensure it was engaging, retaining and promoting its diverse employees. The program designed by CME yielded significant results, with mentors and mentees achieving new goals, gaining confidence, and acquiring enriched perspectives. Mentors have transitioned into leadership roles and protégés have advanced within the company. The impressive results led the organization to become a long-term partner of nearly a decade.

The CME team understands that today’s companies need mentoring solutions that meet the needs of a hybrid workforce. Towards that end, CME’s edge is in creating solutions that work both face-to-face and that employ the effective use of technology across distance.

CME’s grounding in evidence-based mentoring research and principles of adult learning, its deep focus on inclusion, and its wide and deep experience across industries make it the preferred choice for mentoring solutions that help build engaging and inclusive workplace cultures.