Home featured Melissa Richardson, Managing Director of Art of Mentoring Featured Startup Featured “There is nothing more transformational”: Melissa Richardson on the value of mentors James Harkness April 19, 2018 Employers who equate mentor-mentee relationships with a quick coffee catch-up risk missing out on the huge financial gains of having a structured mentoring program, according to Melissa Richardson, the Managing Director of Art of Mentoring. The mentoring program design and implementation business was spun out of Horizons Unlimited, a mentoring consultancy where Richardson is a director and consultant. She told Dynamic Business that she has channelled more than 20 years of experience in the coaching and mentoring field into helping dozens of public and private sector organisations implement effective, best-practice mentoring programs. She considers Art of Mentoring’s new online platform to be the culmination of her work to date. The platform was launched last month to allow organisations of all sizes to design and execute tailored, evidenced-based mentoring programs, and Richardson counts Toyota Financial Services, NRMA, Wesfarmers and the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) amongst the early adopters. Designed by mentoring experts in collaboration with software engineers and UX/UI designers, the platform provides program coordinators with access to online training as well as a library of mentoring resources. In addition, Richardson said it uses a sophisticated algorithm to connect mentors and mentees. To date, it has already successfully matched over 2,500 mentors to mentees, with the aim being to achieve 10,000 matches by June. “Our new platform is suitable for