Ontario social club provides opportunity for young, diverse women to network

After struggling to network after graduating from Western University in 2017, two women decided they should be making their opportunities and extending that out to other women.

From there came Monday Girl. Rachel Wong and Istiana Bestari launched the social club that provides job opportunities, mentorship and skills training that is accessible to young, diverse women.

“Ultimately, our goal is to change the way that women can build their careers in a more inclusive and positive way. We really want to get young women excited about building their careers,” said Wong, one of the co-founders.

Wong tells CityNews she realized early on in her career that she found it challenging to grow her professional network and get mentorship from someone she could relate to as a young woman of colour, despite feeling like she was doing everything the right way.

“I was going to multiple networking events a week. I also was reaching out to people on LinkedIn but getting no response,” Wong explained.

She and her co-founder realized they were experiencing what’s called a “network gap.”

“The network gap is an advantage that some people have based on different factors outside of their skill or education levels,” shared Wong. “These factors can include attending a well-ranked university, living in an affluent neighbourhood or just having a higher socioeconomic status.”

“We wanted to create a safe space for all women”

According to Wong, some of these factors can give some people 12 times the opportunity in the working world.

“We wanted to change that, and we wanted to create a safe space for all women, regardless of background, to make job and mentorship opportunities more accessible.”

Networking was also very male-dominated, Wong explained, with one of their key slogans being, “The Boys Club, but for all women.”

“We want to create a safe space for women to be able to meet likeminded women and also be able to have these conversations that affect, for example, that women’s gender pay gap, whether it comes to other, you know, topics as well that we can have a place to speak about it.”

Monday Girl opens on a quarterly basis for registration and provides access to career-building skills along with a mentorship portal with over 80 mentors this year.

“We’re really excited, and we’re going to spotlight a diverse range of industries and leaders from different backgrounds. So ultimately, you can think of it as your go-to digital network community and a way for you to connect with mentors that you wouldn’t have had the chance to otherwise.”

Along with the mentorship, there are also workshops, courses and in-person meetings. Wong said she hopes to provide young women with the platform she didn’t have when she first started her career.

“We run workshops on reaching out to people on LinkedIn, topics with understanding equity compensation or negotiating your salary. These are all topics that I wasn’t taught in school. So, it made a huge difference coming out of it,” added Wong.

To find out more about what Monday Girl has to offer and sign up for their waitlist ahead of their next registration window, you can head to their website.