Connecting and Growing Women Through Mentorship
Our mission at OneUpOneDown is to make it easy for women to connect, learn, and grow together through high-quality mentorship.
One of the most significant factors affecting an individual’s success and quality of life is the people they surround themselves with. Through mentorship, we enable more women to surround themselves with people who will uplift them and help them realize and achieve their potential. We provide women with new perspectives, insights, and influences from outside their existing environments, helping them thrive and make the changes they desire.
Why OneUpOneDown Mentorship
The world is full of people with unique talents, insights, and experiences worth sharing.
There is immense potential for us to learn from one another—not through generic information, but through specific stories and perspectives tailored to individual experiences. When shared with the right person at the right time, these insights can break patterns, unlock opportunities, and change lives. What might seem insignificant to one person could be transformational for another.
We all have the capability to exchange perspectives, insights, and ideas that foster growth and connection at a level many never experience. Our focus is at OneUpOneDown is to give more women the opportunity to connect with the right person at the right time, and to develop the skills to create trusted, authentic mentorship relationships.
We’ve developed a unique methodology and enabling technology for women worldwide to connect, learn, and lead through mentorship. Women are seeking to connect, learn, and lead authentically, yet they have less access to mentors and role models in senior leadership. Our system understands what women need to cultivate careers aligned with their visions and the impact they seek to make.
As a team, we continually experience the profound development and self-actualization that mentor-mentee relationships offer. In fact, our Co-Founders, Natalie Robinson and Dzhuliana Nikolova, first met through OneUpOneDown mentorship, transforming their lives.
Every day, we witness the impact of women mentoring other women, and we are deeply excited and dedicated to our vision of a world where mentorship is an everyday practice. In this world, women realize their superpowers in building relationships.
Get to know the team:
OneUpOneDown Methodology
Near-peer mentorship
We make matches based on near-peer mentorship, so mentors are just a couple of life stages ahead of mentees. This form of mentoring results in highly relevant advice and enhances both the mentor and mentee’s ability to relate to one another, learn & grow.
Each match lasts three months so mentor and mentee can work together over time to create a trusted relationship and experience outcomes together.
Optimising the learning curve
Our goal at OneUpOneDown was to create a system that could successfully match millions of women worldwide in transformative mentor-mentee relationships.
We aimed to design an engagement format that maximised the benefits of strong connections between dedicated mentors and mentees while minimising the challenges of less committed participants.
Our objective was to establish a method that ensured focused matches, maintaining sufficient interaction points for mentors and mentees to collaboratively build a meaningful narrative of progress without overwhelming commitments.
After careful consideration, we decided on 3-month long matches, consisting of four meetings in total.
This structure includes two meetings in the first month and one in each of the last two months. This simple yet highly effective approach strikes a balance, fostering a conducive environment for mentorship without risking an overload of interactions. After one match ends, mentors and mentees can be rematched for a new learning experience.
Removing uncertainty & building mentorship confidence
In our commitment to ensuring a seamless and gratifying experience for both mentors and mentees, it was imperative to eliminate the friction that might arise when individuals attempt to establish mentorship relationships.
This has been accomplished through the implementation of an automated matchmaking system, presenting one suitable match at a time, and the establishment of clear guidelines for engagement.
In addition to these measures, we provide a wealth of resources, guides, and training to bolster mentors and mentees in their respective roles. This comprehensive support system is designed to cultivate confidence in their ability to both give and receive mentorship.
Ultimately, our aim is to empower individuals to effectively learn and grow within their mentorship relationships.
Automating manual tasks and essential touch points
Our beautiful software system automates all the manual tasks essential for establishing and managing a mentorship program. This includes the entire process of making matches, facilitating communications, providing access to resources, and efficiently collecting and sharing information.
Serving the needs of ambitious women
Addressing the learning and development needs of women that are not being met in their workplaces
Although female participation is growing in traditionally male-dominated workplaces, senior management and decision making is still overwhelmingly male. When you scratch the surface of most organisations, you’ll find that they’re based on male values and behaviours, for the most part without even realising it. The way they operate, work, communicate, and recognise value is tied to a male perspective.
So now, despite the shift toward encouraging more female participation in leadership and traditionally male-dominated industries, there’s still a lot of work to do to support the women who step into these spaces and operate and lead authentically.
We connect women to support each other to realise our full potential
Our solution enables women to thrive, create impact and add value with their work in a way that’s authentic to them – women focused near-peer mentorship. There are certain problems women face that are best understood by connecting with other women.
With the backing of like-minded mentors, women can more confidently take their place and grow within even a challenging environment, as well as gaining the validation needed to understand that their perspectives and experiences are valuable.
Our experience is modelled off of near-peer mentorship because we have seen firsthand how successful it can be and the positive impact it can have, when facilitated effectively.
Meet the team
Natalie Robinson
Co-founder and CEO
Dzhuliana Nikolova
Co-founder and CTO
Dimitar Sodev
Lead Back-End Developer
David Ivanov
Full-Stack Developer
Advisory board
Brigitte Baumann
Financial Advisor
Cathy Scharetg
Business Advisor
Amanda Michel
Marketing Strategy
Nelson Shaw
Techical Advisor
Yoram Ben-Zvi
Business Advisor