The first time I really started thinking about the phrase 'sponsor' is when I read Sheryl Sandberg's book ‘Lean In’. She explains it quite well and it made so much sense to me. There is a fundamental difference between a mentor and a sponsor, and Rosa touched on this in the last post. A sponsor is somebody preferably within your organization who is there, physically and emotionally, who will bat for you. A mentor is a person invested in your growth, but more from the sidelines as opposed to being in the middle of the day-to-day operations. That's how I understand it at least.

While thinking about this, I remembered seeing 'The Hunger Games', a perfect example of how sponsorship works. You might think "What does the movie have anything to do with what we're talking about?", but hear me out...