CFO Magazine: Cognizant’s Chief Financial Officer Talks About the Art of Mentoring

“I’ve always had the mind-set that if I want to move on and be promoted and do the next thing in my career, I need to ensure that I have the right team in place to do what I’m doing today,” says Karen McLoughlin about mentoring. “And so I think by definition, that creates an environment where you’re constantly looking to mentor people.”

CFO magazine spoke with female finance chiefs to find out why and how they mentor—what advice they give, what they look for in a mentee, what they gained from their own guides, and how women in corporate finance can approach mentorship strategically.

Looking back on her own career, McLoughlin says she had “at least 10 to 12 people that I had a strong mentoring relationship with.” Such relationships were formal and informal, involving mentors inside or outside her company “who I thought I could learn something from,” be it technical skills or “thought skills, how they conducted themselves, or thought about their business.”

Speaking about a sage piece of advice from one mentor that has stuck with her, McLoughlin quotes: “‘Give your people enough rope to try new things, but not enough to hang themselves.’” A mentor, she says, can “say something very simple but profound that really makes you think about how you conduct yourself.”

At Cognizant, says McLoughlin, mentoring isn’t about women per se, but about “people who I think have good, long-term opportunities to be successful.” In particular, she looks for mentees who have “a passion—somebody who can really contribute within the company.”

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