EIC Women Leadership Programme 7th cohort FAQ

The 7^th EIC WLP cohort offers a skills and networking enhancement programme dedicated to female researchers and aspiring female leaders in the EIC Community. The entire programme comprises four elements listed below: 

1. Training Sessions tailored to your needs and covering critical leadership skills relating to team management, talent acquisition, and setting up your own business. Examples of training sessions include identifying your leadership style, building inclusive teams, getting buy-in, and effective decision-making.  
2. Networking Events to leverage on the EIC Community and expand your network. Each networking event will have a distinct focus, for example a challenge circle, meeting our alumni or connecting with inspiring role models.  
3. Mentorship Scheme to connect you with one of our suitable mentors. Mentors will support you on challenges related to your leadership and career growth.  
4. Business Coaching Scheme to provide you with the essential tools to address the specific business challenges you are encountering.  

The programme offers a catalogue of profile-based and tailored journeys of training sessions, for example, how to develop your personal leadership and brand, negotiate with partners, pitch in front of investors, and other key topics for innovators to thrive. Based on a needs analysis carried out before the start of the trainings, each session will be tailored to participants’ needs. 

The skills will be further developed during the exchanges with personal mentors and business coaches. 

Each participant will have the opportunity to work with Mentors – experienced entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, and senior managers who will share their extensive managerial experience and provide access to their diverse professional networks. 

Mentors will help participants define their career path, overcome the existing career challenges and set the next steps. You will receive valuable inputs and advice to support you in your career progression by sharing your ambitions and fears with someone that has been in a similar position. 

In addition, you will grow your professional network and expand your personal and professional perspectives by connecting with our Mentors.  

Each participant will have the opportunity to work with a Business Coach, who will help participants to discover innovation opportunities and provide insight on their entrepreneurship potential and improve their business plans, implementation strategies and the market entry. Your coaching priorities may vary from go-to-market, or acquiring partnerships, organisational or financial development. The coach will challenge your assumptions and will let you consider new options in a learning-and-solving manner. 

Mentors will support you with career related challenges and provide support based on their own experiences. Their advice can include reflections on work-life balance, guidance on interpersonal relations within your teams, and introductions to their networks. Business coaches, on the other hand, will help you with business challenges. For example, they can help you discover innovation opportunities and provide insight on their entrepreneurship potential or help you to improve business plans.  

No. No funding of financial support or compensation is associated with the participation in the programme.  Please note that travel and accommodation costs for in-person events are to be borne by the participant.   

We will be adding all participants in an exclusive Alumni Group in the EIC Community Platform where you will be able to network, share relevant news, files and learn from your cohort peers, as well as from the female leaders that joined the previous cohorts of the programme.  In addition, we will organize three networking sessions during the programme. These will allow participants to not only connect with their peers, but with the broader EIC Community.  

The 7^th cohort of the EIC WLP will take place from February to April 2025.  

Timeline of events

* Please kindly note that EIC will not cover your travel & logistic expenses to attend any in-person event. 

The programme will launch its activities with an online introductory workshop in February, followed by an online cohort kick-off meeting.  

The Introductory workshop provides a first opportunity for participants to meet their peers. During this meeting, we will present the objectives of the EIC WLP, give a comprehensive overview of the program, on the Business Coaching and Mentorship Schemes. Moreover, participants can meet and speed date with mentors.  

During the Kick-off meeting in March, we will focus on team building and present the topics of the training sessions that are taking place weekly in March and April.  

In the period of trainings, we will organize one 2-hour training session per week, taking place online (on Zoom). Through these training sessions, participants will develop and acquire essential leadership and business skills. The trainings are led by experts from the industry and are interactive. Participants will familiarize themselves with new skills through discussions, case studies and role-play.  

The programme will enhance the opportunities to network with fellow leaders, EIC Community members, and other relevant stakeholders from the ecosystem through 2 online networking events and one in-person networking event (to be confirmed). 

The programme will be concluded with a Closing Ceremony in April, to acknowledge all implemented activities and concrete impact on your daily innovator life. 

During the introduction workshop organised on 18 February, participants will have a chance to speed-date with mentors from our mentoring pool. After this session, participants will be able to check our full mentor pool and select mentors they would like to work with. The WLP team will support participants in finding a suitable mentor.  

Once participants are matched with mentors, they will schedule bi-weekly meetings with their mentors and meet regularly for a period of 6-months. In May, the WLP team will check-in with participants and mentors to ensure the matching was successful and meetings are taking place regularly.  

From our large pool of EIC Business Coaches, participants will be able to find a coach with ample experience in specific industry and market context. We will assist participants with the pairing process so that the participants will work directly with the EIC Coach of their choice.  

Participants are entitled to benefit of 3 days of business coaching broken down in a number of exchanges suiting your agenda and needs. Meetings can be implemented in the best suitable virtual platform. 

By joining the EIC WLP, participants commit to attend and participate in at least 85% of the training sessions (8 sessions in total: 7 online, 1 in person, 85% attendance rate = attending at least 6 sessions).  

The sessions are important steps that will provide participants with valuable knowledge and tools, so you should really strive to be present. If that is not possible, please inform the organisation team as soon as you can. Your attendance will be linked to your conclusion of the programme, with the receipt of our EIC WLP Completion Certificate. Only the participants that achieve our attendance regulation will be able to claim their EIC WLP Completion Certificate. 

Women researchers engaged in research endeavours with ambitions to spearhead the transformation of their research initiatives into successful businesses seeking to enhance their leadership and entrepreneurial skills and young entrepreneurs with startups not older than 2 years.  Eligible candidates have benefitted from: 

Researchers:  

• EIC Pathfinder   
• EIC Transition   
• FTI under Horizon 2020 
• FET Open and FET Proactive under Horizon 2020 

(Co)founders and managers (CEOs, CTOs, CFOs, COOs, CCOs, etc.) in early-stage ventures (younger than 2 years):  

• EIC Accelerator 
• Women TechEU 
• Seal of Excellence under Horizon Europe  

Besides simple personal and career-related questions, you must elaborate on: 

• Your future aspirations as regards your professional career. 
• Challenges you are currently facing on your professional path. 
• Motivation to participate in the Women Leadership Programme. 
• Expectations from the Women Leadership Programme. 

You will also have to provide us with: 

• EIC instrument your company has benefited from/ EIC project ID / acronym / abstract of the EIC project conducted by your organisation. 
• Your CV in English with a max. of 2 pages in pdf (Applications with CVs in other languages or/and larger than 2 pages will be disregarded). 

The person who coordinated your organisation's EIC project has this information. Please consult with them. 

No, during the application you must explain your role in the EIC funded project, which is one of the requirements for your participation in the programme. Please keep in mind that you will need to keep being part of the EIC supported organisation for the whole duration of the WLP cohort. 

The number of women participants associated with the same EIC project is not limited. However, each applicant will be evaluated on her own merit and not based on the EIC project she has participated in. 

The applicant can work both on an ongoing or a finished EIC project. .

Please use the “Contact Form” option on the side of the application tab to indicate potential technical issues with your application. 

The EIC Women Leadership Programme is dedicated to female members of EIC funded organisations. You cannot apply for the programme if you are no longer employed by an EIC beneficiary. 

Your application will be evaluated based on your motivation, expected impact of participation in the EIC WLP on your future career path and on your profile assessment. 

Your application will be assessed by a panel of experts active in the community promoting women engagement in innovation and entrepreneurship. They all have hands-on experiences in leading their own businesses and/or mentoring prospective women entrepreneurs to grow their own businesses. 

The results will be communicated on 20 January 2025. All applicants will be contacted by the organising team to be informed of the results.