Greetings from the Fortune Most Powerful Women’s Summit in Dana Point, California. Melanne and I are here for three days joined by 300+ of the most powerful women in business. As you may have read, Vital Voices is thrilled to have a partnership with Fortune and the US State Department to run an annual mentoring program that pairs top American businesswomen with emerging female business leaders from around the world (age 27 to 42) for a month-long leadership and professional development program in the United States each May.

One of the great perks of the program is that the mentees get the opportunity to reconnect with their mentors 5 months after the program at this awesome gathering of power-players! And what a thrill for me too. If you’ve seen this month’s cover story in Fortune you know the female icons I’m talking about who share their wisdom - E-Bay’s Meg Whitman, Xerox Chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy, Media Mogul’s like Oxygen’s Gerry Layborne and branding gurus like Shelley Lazarus of Ogilvy and Mather. But they share much more than their business expertise and cutting edge ideas on innovative and growth - sessions are also quite personal like the sharing of strategies on creating balance between work and family.

This is my second time at the annual summit and I am struck again by the fact that in this country right now - like no other time in history - we have a generation of women who have achieved so much in their professional careers - far beyond what they had ever anticipated. And they are now looking around and thinking about how they can share this experience and give back to those still forging towards their goals. That’s where the mentoring program comes in.

This morning at breakfast Ann Moore CEO of Time Inc and the first mentor to sign up for the program in 2005 - led a discussion with mentors and mentees to talk about the program and recruit mentors for next year! So many of the past mentors talked about how they felt they learned as much from their mentees as the mentees learned from them.

As we went around the room each of the mentees shared how the experience had transformed her. When asked if she liked the program, Paki from Egypt said “like? - I am a different person”. Another mentee said that she arrived in the US a businesswoman and went home a social activist! These women have been so influenced by their mentors that they see beyond the professional development aspects of their experience and feel a responsibility to share lessons learned back home.

Over half of the mentees returned to their home countries and started mentoring programs of their own - using the skills and experience they gained to build the next generation of women leaders. The ripple effect has been tremendous - through an investment in 32 women this year and 17 last year we have been able to reach thousands more - talk about global impact!