Why sponsorship may matter more than mentorship for women leaders

Sponsorship may do more to advance women in healthcare leadership than mentorship alone, according to four hospital and health system leaders who spoke with Becker’s Hospital Review.

A recent McKinsey report found that women held 35% of C-suite leadership roles in 2024, up from 29% in 2020, even though women make up the majority of entry-level positions in healthcare organizations. The leaders said the difference between mentorship and sponsorship comes down to access, not advice. Mentors help sharpen skills and build confidence. Sponsors use their influence to put a name forward, often in rooms the person has not yet entered.

Becker’s asked the leaders what sponsorship does to improve women’s representation in healthcare leadership that mentorship alone has not. Their answers pointed to the same theme: mentorship can prepare someone for leadership, but sponsorship can place that person where decisions are made.

Kimberley Darey, MD, president of Endeavor Health Elmhurst Hospital in Illinois, said mentorship is valuable but only gets people part of the way. In her view, mentorship acts as an internal compass. It builds confidence, refines leadership skills and helps address imposter syndrome that many talented female executives still face. But she said mentorship prepares someone for the room, while sponsorship actually puts that person in it.

Darey described sponsorship as active advocacy. Early in her career, she said, a sponsor did not just offer advice but actively put her name forward and championed her for her first major leadership role. For her, the need is not simply for guidance. It is for advocates who will use social capital to open doors and introduce women to key stakeholders.

Audrey Gregory, PhD, RN, senior executive vice president and CEO of AdventHealth’s Multi-Division Delivery Network in Altamonte Springs, Fla., drew a similar distinction. She said mentorship gives wisdom and sponsorship gives access. Both matter, she said, but they are not the same. A mentor helps someone reflect on leadership, sharpen thinking and prepare for the next opportunity. A sponsor does something different: they put a person’s name in the room when that person is not there.

Gregory said sponsors use credibility and social capital to open doors that might otherwise stay closed. She emphasized that this is not because women lack qualifications, but because they may lack visibility among the people making the decision. In healthcare, she said, that issue is especially important for women and underrepresented leaders. Although the workforce is mostly female, higher levels of leadership remain mostly male. In her view, mentorship alone has not closed that gap because the problem is not simply preparation. It is proximity to power and who gets advocated for when real decisions are made.

Renuka Gupta, MD, chief quality officer of Mary Washington Healthcare in Fredericksburg, Va., said mentorship has mattered throughout her career. She recalled people who invested time in her, gave honest feedback, challenged her thinking and helped her become a better physician and leader. But she said the opportunities that changed her career came through sponsorship.

Gupta said that growing up in India, she did not see many women in leadership roles, and even later in her career there were often few women around the table when important decisions were being made. She said hard work is essential, but it does not always guarantee visibility. What stood out most were the times when someone put her name forward, recommended her for a leadership role or advocated for her when she was not in the room. Those leaders took a risk on her and used their influence to create an opportunity she may not have pursued herself.

For Gupta, a mentor helps someone grow, while a sponsor helps that person advance. She said the healthcare field often talks about developing women leaders, but development alone is not enough. Leaders must be willing to actively champion talented women, open doors and create opportunities. The leaders she remembers most are not simply those who advised her, but those who believed in her and gave her a chance before she thought she was ready.

Crystal Manning-Mitchell, MSN, CEO of River Oaks Hospital in New Orleans, said mentorship develops skills, while sponsorship changes trajectory. She has had mentors who challenged, encouraged and helped her grow, but she said the opportunities that fundamentally changed her career came when someone with influence advocated for her while she was not in the room.

Manning-Mitchell said those sponsors did more than offer advice; they gave her access. Someone was willing to attach a reputation to hers and say she was ready. As a Native American woman in healthcare leadership, she said talent alone is not enough. Healthcare includes many women who are already capable of leading organizations, but too often what they lack is not capability. What they lack is someone willing to advocate for them when opportunity arises.

She said sponsorship is the bridge between capability and opportunity. It signals belief in a person’s potential and a willingness to invest one’s own reputation in that potential. In her view, that is how organizations build leadership that reflects the communities they serve. Leadership, she said, is not about waiting for permission, but about creating opportunities for yourself and for the people who come next.

Becker’s also asked what health systems can do to make sponsorship intentional and accountable rather than leaving it to chance.

Darey said health systems should move away from organic chemistry and treat sponsorship as a core business strategy. She said organizations should build structured, formal partnerships across different tiers of leadership so advancement is not left to luck. She also said health systems must invest in personal development, support both internal and external networking, and create psychologically safe spaces where women feel empowered to speak up and lead. When advocacy is systematized, she said, the leadership pipeline becomes richer and more diverse.

Gregory said the glass cliff is real, referring to situations in which women are elevated to senior roles during periods of crisis but are not given the support, resources or time needed to succeed. She said that is a structural problem, not a pipeline problem. Addressing it requires intentional design. Health systems, she said, should build sponsorship into succession planning with the same rigor and accountability used in financial forecasting, including clear responsibility for outcomes.

That means identifying high-potential women and underrepresented leaders early, pairing them with senior sponsors who have real influence and measuring whether the relationships produce tangible results. Gregory said organizations should ask whether these leaders are being promoted, gaining visibility, receiving stretch assignments and earning seats at consequential tables. Those, she said, are the outcomes sponsorship should produce. At AdventHealth, she said inclusiveness is embedded in how leadership pipelines are built and people are developed through the Lead Self, Lead Others, Lead Results framework. Sponsorship without accountability, she said, is simply networking.

Gupta said sponsorship often happens through informal networks and relationships, which can unintentionally exclude talented people who do not have the same visibility or access. She said leaders should ask themselves who they are opening doors for. Not mentoring. Not coaching. Actually opening doors. She said organizations can make sponsorship more intentional by discussing it in succession planning, identifying high-potential talent early and ensuring women are considered for stretch assignments, strategic initiatives and executive-level exposure. Leaders, she added, should be held accountable for developing and advancing others.

The leaders said the message is not that mentorship does not matter. It does. But mentorship alone does not change who gets seen, who gets named and who gets invited into the room. Sponsorship, they said, is what can move women from preparation to opportunity. The source did not report the rest of Crystal Manning-Mitchell’s answer to Becker’s final question.