Toronto, January 12, 2022 – While this month marks the 20th anniversary of National Mentorship Month in the United States, across Canada, only a handful of organizations have adopted the occasion and made it an official focus.

AMA Toronto calls on everyone to recognize this annual campaign that encourages the awareness and promotion of mentoring as a way for organizations to enable individuals to strengthen their careers, personal lives, and empower their leadership potential.

Our association strongly believes “mentorship matters, now more than ever” and that National Mentorship Month should be officially celebrated in Canada and throughout our industry as a meaningful, necessary reminder about the value and benefits of mentorship.

National Mentorship Month is a time for individual marketing professionals across Canada to explore how mentoring programs can add to their knowledge of their discipline, industry sector or organization; expand their network, and provide greater job satisfaction and career opportunities.

Marketing agencies and organizations can leverage the power of mentorship to improve their leadership and talent pipeline, lower staff turn-over, enhance communications, advance DEI, and enable knowledge transfer from a retiring workforce.

And we’re proud to do our part. Since 2008, mentoring programs such as AMA Toronto’s Mentor Exchange and Career Accelerator have been helping the marketing sector become stronger by driving impactful relationships that provide support networks; connect industry professionals and facilitate the exchange of industry knowledge and career advice.

During National Mentorship Month mentees and mentors everywhere have cause to reflect on the importance of mentoring and share their experiences. Our blog this month will feature stories from marketers, some of them new Canadians, who have benefited from our mentorship programming.

As our industry tries to advance diversity and inclusion in Canada, National Mentorship Month should remind us mentoring today is a proven modality to foster progressive change in people and organizations. Inside and outside of marketing, mentoring can help with diversity and inclusion, particularly with immigrant and Indigenous groups.

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Within Canada’s marketing sector and across businesses, mentorship has emerged as an essential management skill at all levels. Moreover, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, with the fusion of office and at-home work there is a well-defined need for mentorship to humanize work relationships, workplace culture and work-life balance, more than ever before.

Certainly, there’s a catalogue of compelling reasons why “mentorship matters” and should be formally recognized in Canada each January. This is why AMA Toronto is stepping up to recognize National Mentoring Month within our association and is calling upon marketers across the country to celebrate, elevate, and encourage mentoring across our industry to drive meaningful, positive outcomes for marketers/employees and businesses.

#MentorshipMatters #MentorshipMonth