Innovation moves faster with circular mentorship

International Women's Day is an opportunity to celebrate progress, while also confronting the challenges that can sometimes hold women back, across many industries including mine, financial services. The barriers are not always loud. Sometimes they look like who gets pulled into the right meetings, whose ideas get the benefit of the doubt and who is seen as "ready" before they have had the same runway to be seen.

My own career path started in a way I did not plan. I got my first credit card in university, and when the bill came due, I could not afford to pay it off. That moment of financial urgency pushed me to find a part-time job as a bank teller and set in motion a career I had never envisioned. Later, as I pursued roles across different banks, I began to understand something else: if you do not see yourself represented at senior levels, it can be harder to picture what is possible.

In many rooms, I was the only Black woman. Early on, I hesitated to seek mentorship because I questioned whether people who had not lived my experience would truly understand it. Instead, I leaned on my father, who became my earliest mentor. He often reminded me my identity meant that too often I would have to be ten times better to be considered for the same opportunities.

Over time, I also learned that waiting to be noticed is rarely a winning strategy. I had to learn to advocate for myself directly, to ask for what I needed and to name the kind of support that would actually move my career forward. That lesson has stayed with me. I've seen throughout my career that when women are specific about the support they need and when leaders respond with sponsorship that is equally specific, the impact multiplies. And when that support becomes part of a company's culture - not a private favor - it opens the gates to determining who gets to contribute and how quickly good ideas can travel.

Mentorship works best when it moves in more than one direction: senior leaders supporting talent with intention, peers sharing unwritten rules with each other and people who have benefited from advocacy turning around and offering the same clarity and access to others. You ask. You receive. You share. You repeat. Done well, circular mentorship creates momentum that does not rely on one gatekeeper or one lucky break.

It also has a real impact on innovation.

Innovation is often misunderstood. People sometimes treat it as a technology conversation when it is equally a systems conversation. Creating value while navigating risk, compliance and operational realities requires more than good tools. It requires a steady flow of ideas, the discipline to test and refine them and the ability to remove friction that quietly blocks progress. When processes are overly complex, when decision-making is unclear and when teams operate in silos, innovation slows. When friction is reduced, roles are clarified and teams have more autonomy, innovation accelerates and speed becomes a meaningful advantage.

At TD, one of the ways we have tried to normalize that flow of ideas is by inviting colleagues across the bank - no matter who they are, no matter their level - to share suggestions that solve real problems, from streamlining internal processes to improving client experiences. Through our internal ideation platform, iD8, colleagues have pitched more than 100,000 ideas, and more than 10,000 have been implemented, which has led to TD being a leading patent filer in Canada. The point is not the platform itself. The point is what happens when people believe their perspective is welcome and when leadership treats creativity and continuous learning as part of the job rather than a side project.

Circular mentorship supports that environment because it helps more people build the confidence and context to contribute. It also helps leaders hear what they might otherwise miss, particularly when experiences differ across race, culture and gender.

Research reinforces something many of us have felt personally: advocacy matters for everyone, but it can be decisive for women of color. Women of color are dramatically under-represented in senior leadership; they account for just 7% of C-suite roles compared with women overall at 29%. Women are also at a disadvantage early on in their careers: for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women are promoted – and the gap is even steeper for women of color, with just 54 Black women and 65 Latinas promoted for every 100 men. And with only 54% of companies saying women's career advancement is a high priority, the structural support women need is far from assured. Those numbers aren't about exclusion. They are about psychological safety, trust, and having someone who intuitively understands the extra calculations that come with being "the only" in the room.

This is where sponsorship becomes non-negotiable. People can give you advice in private, but sponsorship shows up in public. It is what happens when someone puts your name forward for a stretch role, challenges a biased assumption in the moment, or speaks for you when you are not in the room. Circular mentorship makes that kind of sponsorship more visible and more expected, rather than occasional and informal.

For leaders who want to build innovative teams and more equitable outcomes, the shift does not need to be complicated, but it does need to be deliberate. Ask emerging leaders what they actually need, not what you assume they need. Sponsor with specificity, not general encouragement. Encourage networks that cut across functions and backgrounds, because relationships often determine which ideas get traction. Create space for people to "own their brand," to communicate with confidence and to show up authentically, because innovation depends on candor as much as it depends on creativity.

International Women's Day is a reminder that progress is not only measured by representation, but by whether people feel empowered to contribute fully once they are in the room. Circular mentorship is one way to make that real: women advocating for the support they need, leaders responding with visible sponsorship and those who rise using their influence to open doors behind them. In a world where change keeps accelerating, that kind of cycle is not just good for careers. It is good for the pace and quality of innovation itself.