On November 21, the 2009 Global Women’s Mentoring Walk took place in six countries across the globe, convening established women leaders and rising professionals in an effort to foster the leadership potential of the next generation of aspiring women leaders. Organized locally by Vital Voices alumnae of the FORTUNE/US State Department Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership, the first walk to be held in Egypt was carried out with great success. Participant and organizer Noha Khattab, senior vice president at a regional private equity firm, writes on her experience and the mentoring walk in the post below.

Fellow FORTUNE/US State Department Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership alumnae Ghada Darwish, Nermeen Nosseir and myself are proud to report the success of Egypt’s first mentoring walk. Held under the auspices of the Ministry of Family and Population, and sponsored by ExxonMobil and Al Azhar Part, our walk had 120 participants from many disciplines including business, NGOs, media, advertizing, medicine, and education among others.

Before the walk, we had matched mentors with mentees; some mentors walked with only one mentee, while others walked with as many as three mentees. The event was kicked off when Ghada, Nermeen and I gave an overview of the idea of mentoring, and what the walk will be about. We spoke about how we were introduced to the idea of mentoring through the FORTUNE/State Department Global Women’s Mentoring Program, and how we hope that this walk, which is Egypt’s first, would be the first of many to come. We said that we want to work towards reaching out to more and more women, especially marginalized women.

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In a recent article, FORTUNE Editor-at-Large and leading partner of the FORTUNE/U.S. State Department Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership Patricia Sellers highlights the involvement of Oxygen Media Founder and former CEO Gerry Laybourne in the 2009 Global Women’s Mentoring Walk in Kampala, Uganda. The Mentoring Walk, coordinated by Vital Voices, is organized by Vital Voices leaders and alumnae of the FORTUNE/U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership, and emerged from a tradition initiated by Laybourne. A series of community based events, the Global Women’s Mentoring Walks pair established and emerging women professionals to engage in mentoring partnerships in communities across the globe.

Sellers writes on Laybourne’s influence and on the significance of mentees who are paying it forward, inspiring those in their communities as they have been inspired by leaders like Laybourne. Sellers says of Laybourne after her experience:

“Turns out, [Laybourne] made it home from Uganda in time for Thanksgiving. She decided to give thanks this year, she says, for a world of smart, energetic, game-changing women.”

“Career advice on the move, globally” Patricia Sellers, FORTUNE

International women leaders of the Vital Voices Global Leadership Network will coordinate the second annual Global Women’s Mentoring Walk on November 21, 2009. The 2009 Global Women’s Mentoring Walk will take place in communities throughout 6 different countries including:  Argentina, Egypt,  Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia.

Organized as a series of localized community events, the walks will convene established women leaders and rising women professionals to walk together in their communities and engage in discussions regarding their professional challenges and successes. Each walk event will seek to foster the leadership potential of aspiring women professionals for the benefit of local communities. Together, the coordinated walks in 2009 will reach several hundred women leaders and demonstrate the tremendous power of women’s leadership to promote positive change.

The idea for “mentoring walks” originated with Founder and Former CEO of Oxygen Media, Geraldine Laybourne, who developed these events across the United States and inspired alumnae of the FORTUNE/US State Department Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership to do the same in their home communities.

The first mentoring walks were held in November 2008 and coordinated with support from Vital Voices. These walks were met with tremendous success and reached hundreds of women across Africa, Eurasia, the Middle East and Latin America. The 2009 mentoring walks promise to do the same, on an even larger scale.

Front left to right: Rehmah Kasule; participant Adelaide Adwoa Amofah of Ghana; Jessica Shambora, FORTUNE reporter

Two months after the close of the FORTUNE/U.S. State Department Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership program, Vital Voices interviewed Rehmah Kasule, the first participant from Uganda. Her mentor, Barbara Goodstein is the Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Vice President of Marketing for AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company.

Ms. Kasule operates her own marketing firm, Century Marketing, in addition to an entrepreneurship development agency, which supports women interested in starting their own businesses in Uganda. She is also a devoted mother.

Vital Voices: What did it mean to you to be the first Ugandan in the program?

Rehmah Kasule: I think for me it brings a lot of challenge because people expect so much from me. It gives me no excuse to say “so and so” do it, because it’s up to me to do it. It has opened up a lot of opportunities for me and my country.

VV: What were some of the most important lessons you took back from Barbara Goodstein and AXA Equitable?

RK: From Barbara, one she is so grounded, and she has a lot of passion for her work. She knows how to balance her career; she’s always running from work to the children. And that I find very inspiring because not a lot of women can juggle those two. And of course the other thing, she’s really creative as a marketer. She has very cool innovations she’s brought to the company. She has a lot of passion for life, she’s always laughing and joking! I thought, I need to learn a bit of that.

The company, they put a lot of emphasis on the people. I was always joking with them saying people in my country only stay three years in one job, and here I was seeing people have stayed 15 or 20 years in the same company. It is because the company supports them in their careers. They give them training. They help them to plan their careers.

VV: What inspired you to start your own Entrepreneurship Development Agency in 2007?

RK: A lot of people in my country are unemployed and when you talk to them about leaving school and what are they going to do they are always looking for work. I realized that someone must come in to teach people how to start their own businesses. Otherwise, there is a big gap between the people being churned out from universities and then what happens after that. A lot of them end up doing nothing.  [Editor’s note: Since the agency’s creation, Rehmah has counseled over 3,000 people.]

VV: You wrote once that women don’t hear enough success stories from other women in a professional or business arena.  Why do you think these stories aren’t shared, or how do you think they could be better shared?

RK: Women aren’t known for celebrating their successes. They feel as if it is a secret and they don’t say it because people may it take it as if they are blowing their own trumpet. So people in my country don’t celebrate their successes. They feel like if I get something, it is just for my family and people that know about it.  I try to share my stories of success because the other day I was talking to a school about leadership, and I asked them to mention women leaders they know in my country. One girl said I don’t see any! I don’t see any women leaders! So it’s good we share for others to hear and believe that it can be done.

VV: If you could send a message to young Ugandan girls, what would it say?

RK: Your background does not determine your future it’s up to you to look for your destiny and go for it.  And do what you have to do with passion.

VV: Do you think boys have better access to education in Uganda, and if so how can more girls find educational empowerment?

RK: Definitely yes. I think the government is doing a lot of things to empower women. However, it is up to the women to really run it because the government can say this is the law, this is how women should be treated, but it is up to the women to say how do we really implement this? And if the women don’t feel like its up to them, the rights will go.

VV: What is your ultimate goal?

RK: For myself, I really want to become a role model in my country where I can motivate, inspire and guide any others to unleash their potentials.