Karen Holland is a happily married Mother of three children, successfully running a business, Xcam Ltd, making digital cameras for science experiments. She is also a physicist, who worked in industry in fibre optics for a number of years and has also worked in academia both in the Astronomy Group at the University of Leicester, and in the Theoretical Astrophysics group with a Royal Society Industry Fellowship.

Karen’s story shows that as your career changes, so can your mentor. After a number of years working in industry in military and commercial fibre optics, Karen decided to have a career break after the birth of her third child in 1992. As with many scientists on a career break, she didn’t give up science altogether and became involved with the Astronomy Group at the University of Leicester on a voluntary basis. This research was only occasional and in 1995 Karen started up a business with her husband. The business was very low key for the first few years and by 1997 Karen was also working for one day a week doing research at the University of Leicester. Karen’s research led to the publication of a paper in 2000 which, in turn led to her being awarded a Royal Society Fellowship for her research which was awarded for two days a week for four years.

From being on a career break Karen had now secured a prestigious academic Fellowship and was working for an emerging business. It was at this point that Karen had her first mentor. They usually met at a hotel midway between where they both lived, and would meet for about an hour every two months or so. Karen found these meetings very useful and they helped her to sort out her increasingly busy life. The most important thing that came from this mentoring relationship was that it helped Karen to realise that she had to make a decision about which direction to go in. So, two and a half years into her Fellowship Karen decided that she should give it up to focus on the business.

Having made this decision Karen’s mentor suggested that she should have a new mentor who would be better suited to meeting Karen’s needs now she was concentrating on developing her business. MentorSET were able to match Karen with a new mentor who she had contact with for about a year. “They were completely different,” she says, “my first mentor helped me when I was doing the Fellowship and trying to run a business – basically, doing too much! My second mentor was a high flying business woman and we had a forty five minute phone call every three months. She helped me to resolve various business issues that I had at the time”. It was a very different relationship, but Karen’s circumstances had changed and she needed a new perspective. One thing Karen is sure of is that both her mentors have helped her enormously. “It was so good to have someone to talk to, who reflected thoughts, views and options back to me. It helped me to sort out exactly what the problems were, and then think about the solutions.”

When Karen saw an email request from MentorSET for more women who had had a career break and then returned to their careers, to become mentors, she didn’t hesitate in contacting them. Karen is now a mentor herself, and she hopes that she has been able to help her new mentee already as well as gaining a fair bit from the relationship herself.

MentorSET is always looking for women in any science, engineering or technology background to become mentors. Whatever your circumstances or discipline, if you feel that you could become a mentor, or if you would like to be mentored yourself, then please contact Jan West, MentorSET Manager at manager@mentorset.org.uk or look at the website www.mentorset.org.uk