In Amy Vetter’s Podcast, Breaking Beliefs, she interviews Madeline Pratt, CEO and Founder of Womxn Talk Money, about the importance of women mentoring women into leadership roles in accounting firms. 

Pratt founded Womxn Talk Money as a community for mentoring women and as a place to collaborate for the advancement and empowerment of women in the accounting and finance space.

As a business development leader and creative consultant, Pratt has worked with thousands of accounting firms from around the globe to assist them with technology, branding, and sales. After spending eight years leading sales for tech companies in the accounting space, Madeline decided to focus her attention directly on helping firms grow with a focus on women mentoring women into leadership roles and helping firms innovate. With Womxn Talk Money, she offers online education programs and community groups through firm forums.

In this episode, Madeline talks a lot about the importance of mentorship and women role models in leadership. Here she talks about her earliest memories of what she wanted to be when she grew up and the importance of women mentoring women, even when it starts with a sports celebrity:

“When I was 5, 6, 7, I wanted to be an elite athlete. I have an inner athlete that’s so strong. When I got dressed for my first day of kindergarten, I came downstairs and I had a 221 and a football helmet. I was like pure contrast. I was too little to know that girls didn't play football at that level. I discovered soccer and I got into Mia Hamm and it was the best team. I was doing their first big Olympic questions. I was like, ‘I want to be Mia Hamm.’ I had all the books and all the posters.”

Mia Hamm stood out to Pratt as a women role model versus other women athletes at the time because she looked like a Hamm:

“Part of it was visual. I'm a visual person. At age eight, I looked like a mini Mia Hamm. I had a ponytail and my dark hair, but I was a tough little kid. I was gritty. All my best friends were boys, for the most part. A lot of the people that I look to and I aspire to be like is because I saw them and I was like, ‘Finally, that's me. That's who I am. That's what I want in life.”

But for many women, our mothers are our first women mentors. There are still discrepancies though from what our mother tells us we can do versus what the world tells us we can do:

“That model is so important because a lot of us weren't told or are starting to be told that you can be that. I grew up in the generation of and this was my mom saying, ‘You can be anything. You could do anything your brother can do except for walking alone to school.’ It’s like, ‘You can do anything, except.’ You're like, ‘I can do it but there are still so many categories that you go out and you look around and you are like, ‘Where is that person who is showing me what it looks like?’ “

Female mentors can show up in many ways. But promoting qualified women leaders in your company is still one of the key ways of mentoring women because they can see someone who finally looks like them. 

“I see this in this space of leadership. I'd see so many women wanting to step into a role in the space of leadership. We look around and we're like, ‘Where's the model?’That's why it's been so critical to look in and find people where I'm like, ‘That's how I want to do it.’”

To get there, women also have the opportunity to work more closely together to mentor each other and bring each other along on their career journeys. To learn more about Madeline’s life story and the importance of women mentoring women and finding your female mentor, listen to the podcast.