In a significant milestone for women’s leadership development, the Women in Successful Careers (WISCAR) WIN3 Mentoring Programme has celebrated the graduation of 11 accomplished senior management professionals.
The WISCAR WIN3 Mentoring Programme, the highest tier of the WIN-with-WISCAR leadership initiatives, is a three-month virtual mentoring experience designed for senior management professionals aspiring to C-suite and executive management roles.
Amina Oyegbola, the founder of WISCAR, in her address during the graduation ceremonies in Lagos, emphasised that the programme is designed to equip high-potential women with the competencies, network, and visibility required to transition into executive leadership.
“The idea is to create the kind of consciousness in the minds of women, such that they could take more advantage of the organisational dynamics to advance more rapidly,” she said.
Oyegbola, explaining how she started the programme, said that she came up with the idea of a structured mentoring programme to help other women in successful careers grow in their chosen professions.
“I want to pull other women up, so I thought of a structured mentorship programme where the rules of engagement are very clear, which enables successful women to invest time in mentoring the next generation in a structured form.
“So I identified both women and men who shared the vision, and pulled them all into the advisory board,” she said.
Speaking on the milestone success, she said that the key milestones are the ability of the organisation to continue to deploy the programme to touch as many people as possible.
“We’ll continue on that path, not just for WIN3, but all the other programmes, we have WIN1, WIN2, WIN3, and also some specialist mentorship programmes that we started deploying since last year, such as the Women in Law Mentorship Programme.
“The programme started last year, we finished one batch, and we’re going to complete the second batch this year. We’re also looking forward to the International Women’s Day event in March,” she said.
Oyegbola explained that the Women in Law Mentorship Programme is about gender justice, building the capacity of women in the law and ensuring that WISCAR helps to change the demographic in terms of the percentage of women in different strands of the law, across the entire legal ecosystem.
Josephine Sarouk, managing director at Bayobab, emphasised that statistics have shown that most organisations led by women do significantly better than male-led ones, and that there could be multiple reasons for that.
“I think the power of women’s leadership is very transparent,” she said.
She applauded WISCAR for its mentoring programme, which she described as an ecosystem of success, consisting of not just people who are impacting others, but also people who are learning more on the sidelines, picking up information, which in future becomes a powerful tool that they in turn, pass on to other generations to come.
Olufunke Amobi, executive director, operations at Stanbic Bank, in her address, said the event was not merely to celebrate the completion of just another programme, but to recognise a transition.
“Transition is a movement from intention to execution, from aspiration to structural clarity, and from potential to dissipate leadership.
“WISCAR is a home for leaders. I’ve heard many successful people equate the mentoring programme as an unending relationship, something that comes and will stay,” she noted.
Rositta Osoba, a senior manager of business analytics and one of the mentees, said the Win3 Mentorship Programme strengthened her ability to think strategically beyond her immediate role.
“It challenged me to move from execution to strategic influence. The programme helped me move from simply delivering results to aligning stakeholders intentionally and making decisions grounded in long-term impact rather than short-term wins.
“The most valuable aspect of the programme for me was the depth of my mentors. I learned from them within a safe but stretching environment. The conversations were honest, they were practical, filled with experience, and they were transformative,” she said.
Temitope Omofaiye, a commercial manager, and another mentee, said she joined the Win3 WISCAR Mentorship Programme with a clear goal to position herself strategically in her career, and that has been one of the most rewarding and transformative experiences of her life.
“I was paired with Amina Oyegbola and Joseph Sarouk, and my one-on-one mentorship sessions with them were truly remarkable. Remarkable in the sense that their guidance gave me a lot of clarity and confidence in the marketplace,” she said.
The ceremony marked the culmination of months of intensive mentorship, strategic leadership training, and peer collaboration designed to strengthen executive capacity and expand professional impact.
