Interviews: Cathelijne Schuitemaker Wichstrøm & Tamsen Wassell

Last month Clotilde Tesón Ruiz, VP of PWN Barcleona' mentorship program, highlighted the many ways in which mentorship helps women increase their productivity, challenge themselves professionally and develop their leadership skills. This month, Gabriella Lovas interviews two participants in the program to get their take on how the experience challenged them.

Cathelijne Schuitemaker Wichstrøm  (Mentee)

Job Seeker

Cat, who is half Dutch and half Norwegian, arrived randomly in Barcelona. At the time, she was traveling a lot while working remotely for a start-up based in Japan. “I thought I would leave here after three months,” she says. “Three years later, I’m still here.”

With her remote work, she felt that she wasn’t able to connect properly to the city and to the people here so she took a job at a large, multinational company. She also set up a side business with a partner in the hotel industry. Because she wanted to give her new company a real shot, she decided to quit her job. Unfortunately, the start-up didn’t work out.

Cat realized that she needed help to find her focus and build a support system here, so she decided to join the PWN mentoring program. Now, she is looking for a job where she can further develop her skills in entrepreneurship, finance, business development or project management.

Cat really enjoys working with a mentor from a completely different field because it provides her with a fresh perspective and opens her mind to new things. “During COVID-19 everything has been online through Skype, but I was very happy to finally meet her in person in July,” she says.

Read more: For more on the PWN's mentorship program, read the first article in the series: Mentorship: Accelerating Diverse, Gender-Balanced Leadership.

Her mentor challenged her with questions like: What are the pros and cons of your previous experiences? What kind of manager do you respond to? How do you see your life in Barcelona in the next five years? They also talked a lot about self-branding, something Cat feels she isn’t very good at, yet.

“I get a lot of support from my mentor to create my own rules, my own life,” Cat says. “I am very happy with the match made, I trust her completely and I hope to stay in contact with her beyond the program. I hope she feels the same way,” she adds.

Tamsen Wassell  (Mentor)

President, Wassell Enterprises, INC.

Tamsen moved from the US to Barcelona because she wanted to experience living in another country for a year or two—that was six years ago. She and her spouse fell in love with the lifestyle and the sun and now, “we’re very clear that we won’t leave until we die.” She loves Barcelona because it’s easy to get around and to make interesting friends. 

An organizational development consultant for large corporations like Nike and Intel, Tamsen continued to work with her clients in the US after moving here. Four years ago she became an investor and she now trades stocks for a living. As a volunteer effort to teach both locals and expats the fundamentals of stock investing, she started two non-profit stock clubs.

For Tamsen, after having had such a successful career, mentoring is all about giving back. She’s been mentoring other women for over four years now and has had six mentees. While she doesn’t see much of a difference between online and face-to-face mentoring, she stresses that there is a very clear distinction between mentoring and coaching. “You are giving your mentees space to figure out their own path but at the same time you’re sharing your path and you’re a bit more directive,” she says. “I share with them how I screwed up, too.”

She wants to teach her mentees by giving them examples and connecting them with her contacts. “Men had that for a long time,” she adds. 

“I want to learn from these women, too,” explains Tamsen. She is curious about what it is like to work in Spain, what the cultural and work differences are and what kind of challenges women face in the workplace today. “I find that women are facing some of the same struggles we did thirty years ago.”

Coming up next month, Gabriella interviews Paola Gómez Corzo & Martina Bote for the third and final article in our series on the PWN's mentorship program.

You can learn more about the PWN Barcelona's mentorship program and events on the website at pwnbarcelona.net and follow the organization on Facebook @pwnbarcelona, Twitter @PWNBarcelona and LinkedIn.