The power of sponsorship

City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the U.S., has invested in creating a diverse pipeline of talented leaders through formal and informal sponsorship programs. At Modern Healthcare’s 2023 Women Leaders in Healthcare Conference, Debra Fields, chief transformation officer at City of Hope, led a conversation with City of Hope executives who shared strategies to cultivate a culture of sponsorship and advice to establish a meaningful sponsorship relationship.

Joline Treanor: There are distinct elements when we think about sponsorship and mentorship. I use a sports analogy—a mentor is like a teammate, giving you pointers on what they observe you doing, insights and tips, whereas a coach is going to help you perfect what you are doing. And a sponsor is going to get you on a team, they are going to help you get the best position, they are going to negotiate and navigate getting you front and center. I’ll also add a fourth category, which is a personal board of directors. These are people you work with, or people outside of the industry, who you can really lean on and ask the authentic questions. All four are critically important as you are navigating your career.

Kristin Bertell: A sponsor is willing to use their political capital for your support. It isn’t a quid pro quo; this is not, ‘I’m going to mentor you so you’re better at your job and so I look better as your boss.’ Rather, this is someone who takes an interest in you as a person and wants to help you become your best contributor to the mission. It’s the difference between being valued and valuable. A sponsor invests in you as a valued member of that community.

Bertell: The first is genuine interest in that person. Another is influence—can I really influence that person’s success? Can I help them achieve what they want to achieve? And the third is investment. Being a sponsor means you really do have to commit to that person, not just regarding their career, but also the stage they’re at in life. I remember going through my first years of having newborn babies at home, those were the conversations I was having with my sponsor, saying, ‘I am juggling a lot right now, and if you send me on a plane to go to a conference, that is not going to help me. What I need is someone to help me navigate this stage in my life.’

From a sponsee perspective, now this is the tough part. It’s easy to be the sponsor, because you’re the one with all the goodies. To be on the other side requires vulnerability. It requires you to show up, be authentic with your sponsor and let go of the imposter syndrome. This is where you have to be honest and say, ‘I’m feeling a little bit uncomfortable that I have newborns at home, and I can’t get on the plane. I’m feeling like I’m letting down my boss, and I don’t know how to navigate that.’ You have to be trusting. I have had conversations with my sponsor where I requested something, and she would say, ‘Not yet.’ Trust why they are saying not yet. They will know how to get you at the table, but you must trust the process and relationship, and that is really hard.

Sharlene Brown: For me, it is critical to have a sponsor who considers my full identity as a mother and a professional. I’ll share a time I had to break up with a sponsor, because in a lot of ways I wasn’t ready to be vulnerable and share my hardships, especially after having my first child. To set the stage, prior to being at City of Hope, I was a consultant. I was traveling (extensively) with a 10-month-old at home. That was incredibly hard—physically and emotionally draining. I had a sponsor who was amazing—putting me up for high-visibility roles and constantly saying my name in rooms that I wasn’t in. I mustered up the courage to talk to him (about my personal needs), and I really did a poor job; we ended the meeting with him saying, ‘I put your name in the ring for an opportunity in Chicago.’ I live in Los Angeles. It was a wonderful opportunity, but not the right time for me. I left that room and thought, ‘He’s fired as my sponsor.’ That was the first time I was practicing this concept of vulnerability. For a lot of women, especially women of color, we grow up trained to say, ‘Yes’ to everything. It’s a radical shift to suddenly say, ‘I can’t take that on because it doesn’t align with who I am right now.’ Now, being at City of Hope, it has been amazing to be surrounded by women powerhouses. I have gotten better at practicing vulnerability, showing more of my authentic self, and equipping my sponsor with information so he or she can advocate for me in ways that align with who I am.

Treanor: I have two rules that I always share. Rule number one is believe in yourself—you are there for a reason, you know the grit and the hard work you have put in to get a seat at the table. And when in doubt, rule number two is refer back to rule number one.

Bertell: We are fortunate at City of Hope to have this culture of sponsorship. Not every organization has a defined program or commitment to sponsorship. I want to talk about informal sponsorship and formal sponsorship. There are many opportunities to sponsor in informal settings such as nominating a colleague for a task force. Regarding official sponsorship, I want to share a funny story. There was a young woman early in her career who I thought was a bright superstar. I was taking a lot of interest in her career development. I really believed in her. I was nominating her for things and putting her up for different task forces. About two years into working for me, City of Hope was starting to roll out our official sponsorship program, and she was very excited about it. She went to an introduction meeting about what sponsorship is. Afterward, she said to me, ‘OK, I have something official to ask of you. Would you be my sponsor?’ I said, ‘What do you think I’ve been doing for the last two years?’ Here’s a couple of things you should think about (when you ask someone to be your sponsor). Know what you’re asking for, because if you’re in an organization that doesn’t talk openly about sponsorship, this person might not know exactly what you’re asking for. And honor their time. Your sponsor is probably sponsoring other people and very busy. This is where showing up and talking to your sponsor in real terms is important. Know it’s a commitment and it requires you to show up as your true self. 

Brown: I joined City of Hope in March 2020. I moved to be closer to campus so I could come in daily, and the world shut down. It forced me to be creative in how I built up my network at City of Hope. First, look at the relationships that you already have, and really leverage them. There’s also a lot of power behind doing good work. That might seem obvious, but that’s an important piece of a puzzle because the sponsor is investing in you. As we all know, when you invest in something, proof of concept is so important.

The other thing is when I join an organization, one of the first groups I go to are the employee resource groups (ERG). I can’t name a single organization I’ve been in where a good Black ERG is not an initial home base for me. (When I started at City of Hope), I reached out to the members there and used that as an initial starting point to build community because that commonality was so important.

Treanor: The tone is set at the top—the fact that our senior leader is saying sponsorship is core to who we are as an organization and how we form as a community is critically important. We have a variety of programs at City of Hope. We have a development program called Lead for high-potential performers. The intention of that is not only sponsorship, but to create mentors and peer groups across the organization. As you can imagine, City of Hope is quite complex, and getting somebody from pharmacy to work with somebody in facilities may not happen naturally. Through this program, the intention is to create that opportunity. It helps us understand the entire body of work that’s going on at City of Hope. We also just launched a mentoring program where we’re identifying individuals who need or want additional support and pairing them up.

Bertell: In healthcare, where we are all under so many pressures right now, our people are the most important (asset) to deliver on our mission and our objectives. Sponsorship is about that investment in our people, our commitment to our people, and helping them be their best contributors.

Brown: When I think about sponsorship in the healthcare industry, sometimes we fall into a bit of a trap. There tends to be a very strong association between sponsorship and altruism. More organizations should pivot the language they use to ground it in the business case behind sponsorship. This isn’t just a feel-good activity, but rather, it’s critical to the vitality and longevity of an organization. That language helps a lot with the imposter syndrome, because suddenly sponsorship doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh, well, I’m at the table because someone was so kind.’ The other critical dimension is diversity and inclusion. So many organizations today are reckoning with, ‘how do we serve our diverse communities?’ It’s true that when you have senior leadership that mirror the communities served, that is how you achieve your vision. That happens through a sponsorship pipeline. I’ll share a personal story that illustrates this. My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer about 18 months ago. I flew out to New York to be with him for his first appointment. My dad has an aversion to the medical community, rooted in history. The doctor started with all the science. My father, who is a very stubborn man, was putting up a fight. I saw this spark of sponsorship happening in the room between the doctor and his more junior counterpart, who was a Black woman. She saw the blind spot. She saw right into what this doctor was walking into and why this was not going well, and she softened it by asking my dad how he’s feeling, what’s his experience and what he knows to be true about science. That completely changed the entire dynamic. Those two people may not know that was a sponsorship moment, but to me, it really illustrates the need to have that pipeline.

Brown: I’ve had sponsors, frankly, since I was in elementary school. I feel this imperative to pay it forward—that is my soft spot. I am so passionate about uplifting other women. I’ll share this book with everyone, recommended to me by a sponsor who was so important to me, called “The Blessing.” A group of unicorns is called a blessing. If you think about women in leadership, and especially when you think about women of color in leadership, they are unicorns. It’s so important for unicorns to see each other, come together, empower each other, and serve together. We’re all looking for evidence that someone who looks like you can thrive and succeed.

Treanor: It’s from the investment of others that I sit on this panel. A lot of it came from hard work and grit, but a good, large portion of it came because somebody saw in me something I didn’t see in myself. I also love this view of paying it forward. As a woman of color, this is incredibly important to me. I saw it in my mother—I saw the doors she opened and kicked down. At one point, when I was working at another organization, I was leading diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we were having a challenge getting sponsors to connect with our people. Part of it was because it was a large consulting firm. All the leaders were older white men, and they were uncomfortable with this notion of connecting with a diverse population. I said, ‘Look, when you walk into a room of an ERG and you’re seeing people of color, they’re not thinking, ‘Who’s this tall white guy walking in here?’ They’re thinking, ‘He is the senior partner at Walmart, and I want to know him.’ You have to take down some of these perceptions and connect on a human level.

Bertell: The first sponsor during the beginning of my career was an African-American woman. I was the only Caucasian woman in our office, and she has been my sponsor for 30-plus years. She is somebody who really took an interest in me. I had lived in Southern California my whole life. I had no perspective on the world, and Jackie invested in me to teach me, not just about the job, but about how the world works and how healthcare works. We were at a community hospital in southeast Washington, D.C., and she invested in me like no other. I keep in touch with her, and she’s a great relationship to me.

Brown: I’m going to go way back to elementary school. I grew up in the Bronx. Like the story of so many, I was not in a good school because of the zip code that I happened to live in. (The principal of the elementary school) made it so that I was able to go to a middle school outside of my zip code, and to this day, I believe that’s the reason I’m sitting on this panel. It goes back to this notion that sponsorship can exist at so many levels of your career and your life.

City of Hope’s mission is to deliver the cures of tomorrow to the people who need them today. Founded in 1913, City of Hope has grown into one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the U.S. and one of the leading research centers for diabetes and other life-threatening illnesses. City of Hope research has been the basis for numerous breakthrough cancer medicines, as well as human synthetic insulin and monoclonal antibodies. With an independent, National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center at its core, City of Hope brings a uniquely integrated model to patients spanning cancer care, research and development, academics and training, and innovation initiatives. City of Hope’s growing national system includes its Los Angeles campus, a network of clinical care locations across Southern California, a new cancer center in Orange County, California, and treatment facilities in Atlanta, Chicago and Phoenix. City of Hope’s affiliated group of organizations includes Translational Genomics Research Institute and AccessHopeTM.