Cecilia Bernard has been the Secretary General of Mentor Sweden for 5 years - a non-profit organization that helps young people grow, become strong and believe in themselves through mentoring. She has a background as CEO of several companies in business development, brand development and technology development and has held board assignments in digital transformation. In addition to this, she has also run her own consulting business and been CEO of the digital agency Making Waves and the communications agency B-Reel.

Cecilia, how to become Secretary General of Mentor?

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After many years as a consulting CEO, I was motivated by the idea of applying my leadership in an organization whose main purpose was not to make money. I therefore applied to the non-profit sector and was attracted to Mentor, which has an effective methodology (mentoring), an important target group (young people in socio-economically vulnerable areas) and an exciting board (including Queen Silvia, Stefan Persson and Bertil Hult). The recruitment process itself was very similar to a CEO process. I was recruited via a recruitment consultant with several interviews with various board members, tests and references.

What challenges (external and internal) do you see for the further development of your business?

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Externally, it is clear that the need for our activities has only increased. During my more than four years at Mentor, we have experienced a clear change in social development. We are currently witnessing how fundamental values such as democracy and equality are being questioned, while structures that took decades to build are being torn down. Polarization is a fact, the climate of debate has hardened and we are increasingly hearing "us and them" thinking. We try to counteract this by creating meetings that would not otherwise have taken place - between young people and adults, between schools and businesses, and between people from different socio-economic backgrounds.

Internally, we have undergone an extensive journey of change, focusing on prioritization, digitalization and economic growth. This has led to us standing strong as an organization today. By making clear choices, over the past five years Mentor has doubled the number of hours of operation and increased turnover by 50%. We have implemented impact measurement in all programs and can clearly show social return on investment. Our employees are professional and happy in the workplace.

Now our next step is to go truly national - to scale up our activities so that young people across the country can benefit from them.

How do you measure success in Mentor?

We are extremely KPI-driven, and all KPIs are set at both departmental and individual level, with quarterly follow-ups. A KPI map that we have on the wall shows how the targets are linked and who shares responsibility for them.

We measure both quantitative results - such as the number of mentor pairs matched and the number of young people reached by the program - as well as qualitative evaluations and interviews with both mentors and young people. We also analyze results from before and after measurements from our programs that show effects on young people's self-confidence, confidence and well-being.

In addition, we also use classic business metrics, such as economic growth, brand awareness and employee satisfaction.

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