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Blog: Launch of the 5th edition of the UNIC Women’s Cinema Leadership Programme


On 30 June, a new intake of mentors and mentees joined the UNIC Women’s Cinema Leadership Programme, marking the beginning of its fifth edition.

In a special online session moderated by Monica Chadha, Independent Director, mentors and mentees of the fourth edition passed the torch to the new cohort.

It was the perfect moment for UNIC to celebrate how far we’ve come since we’ve embarked on this journey in 2017. The huge interest in the programme and the record number of applications received in the past months highlighted the need and importance of such schemes for the industry.

As is tradition, we kicked-off this year’s get-together with an inspirational speaker. UNIC was honoured to be joined by Suzie Welch, Group Chief People Officer at ODEON Cinemas, who shared her learnings and path to leadership.

Following this, the floor was given to the graduating mentors and mentees, who shared their mentoring journey, individual highlights from the past year and best practices. It was inspiring and - often - emotional to hear their stories about courage, strength, connection and vision.

We then welcomed and exchanged thoughts with mentors and mentees from the fifth edition, both on their motivation to join the programme and on their expectations from the upcoming 12 months. We were delighted to welcome 11 mentors and 11 mentees – the biggest edition so far – to our community of women leaders.

All in all, it was an empowering session that brought our programme to new heights.

We look forward to seeing how the journey of the new cohort of mentors and mentees will unfold in the upcoming mentoring year!

A press release on the launch of the fifth edition of the programme can be found here.


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